Miriam C. wrote::(
Does that mean I caused the adhesion issues. I sanded with 100, and 250 and I think I finished in the 300's.
Smooth as a peace of glass.......
Oh well I am chemically stripping the finish now. There is still stuff on the wood.
The plywood is only 3/8" so the veneer can't be too thick but I am pretty good with a light hand.....
Thanks again.
sanding that fine may not have cause it but it sure contributed to it.. about the only time you should go finer than 220 is on end grain of hardwood like cherry and maple etc. the other thing is sanding to very fine grit clogs the pores with sand dust. it's very hard to remove because you've packed it in with pressure and heat. just blowing it off with compressed air or brushing it off won't get it very well.. a wood cell is like a grain of rice but hollow. when you saw plane and sand wood you open up pores. now the surface is like a bunch of canoes. if they're clean, there's tons of surface for the finish to adhere to, if you fill them/plug them with dust, all there is for the finish to adhere to is the rim of the canoe. people who sand wood very fine are usually doing it because they are going to use a penetrating finish (danish oil, tung oil etc.) rather than a film finish (varnish, urethane etc.). with those types of finish you don't have the adhesion problems and you can sand to whatever grit you want..
your BB should have 5 or 7 layers of veneer. they are all the same thickness at the start. most other plywood has fewer and thicker core veneers and a very thin face veneer. usually less than i/32 to start. they are then run through a wide belt sander at the factory and are much less than that once you get it. this type of ply is much easier to sand through especially on light coloured face veneers.. you don't need to go all the way through to ruin it. once the veneer gets thin enough you can see the core veneer through it. usually you don't see this until you put some finish on and POW! there it is..
chemical strippers are good but they are dangerous. use all the precautions you can. gloves, goggles, skin protection, all of it. even the enviro-stuff is nasty. I would suggest putting the sludge in old metal paint cans and poking a few tiny holes in the lid to allow any pressure to escape until all the VOC's have evaporated. once it's all dried out it's pretty safe.
there's no easy fix to your problem. in the end it's better to strip and start fresh.. it sucks but that's the way it goes.