A lesson learned

[Dave Bagwill]

So I'm putting some tru-oil on a top; I've done it before with no problem.

This morning I commute out to my shop/barn, and upon inspecting the top I notice some off-color areas on the lower bout. I took some 00 steel wool (synthetic) to those areas with no good results. I took various grits of sandpaper, starting with 1500 grit and working down, with no good results.
I'm beginning to get sweaty; on my first guitar I had real trouble with some black purfling sanding dust that had worked its way into the top grain and was well-nigh impossible to remove. This looked to be the same thing, but since there was no black purfling involved, it had to be something else.
So I took it all the way down to the wood, to find...........steel wool fibers.
Now I learned a lesson about steel wool on my second guitar - that most steel wools have OIL in them, that also makes for a nasty residue that is well-nigh impossible to remove. I've used synthetic steel wool since then.
Until now. I had purchased some non-oily steel wool - brand name Liberon, it's really good stuff - and used it early on in this project between coats of tru-oil. Normally I am totally anal about getting every speck off the top before applying a new coat; don't know what happened here, but there the fibers were.
I was able to remove them with a little light scraping and a magnet, but now I've got to re-coat a few areas and try to get it all matched up. Fortunately, tru-oil is easy to work with and easy to match.

[TonyinNYC]

That is a real bummer. At least you were able to get the fibers out. Good luck with the refinish!