Those of you who have refinished your own wood...
 

Gents;

The vent piece was de laminating in my 1995 car and I decided to try and repair it. It was very challenging but after several attempts and stripping of what I had done, something pseudo acceptable came out.

I just used a heat gun to remove the old polyurethane and used a can of quick dry polyurethane to re-coat. Not perfect, but better than before.

Question is now now that I have sprayed the last bit of polyurethane, do I sand with 600 and use car polish afterwards to try to create a better shine? There are mixed opinions online, and there is certainly orange peel in my finished product.

Should I sand the last coat with 600 and use polish afterwards, or no ?

before:

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.jag...d6e314e00.jpeg
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.jag...35e2deb01.jpeg

After
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.jag...6dfeaafb1.jpeg
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.jag...5c48bfdef.jpeg

Looks great Mark. Good to see there are ways to do this on our own and get good results.

Thanks!!

If I was a more patient man, results would have been better, but I usually don’t have the patience it takes to make these manual things come out perfect

I did mine with 2000 grade it wont dig too deep into the finish,

How many coats of poly did you apply? You should apply at least 3 coats to give enough material to buff out.
I would suggest using 600 to get the peel out but follow with 1000 then 2000 grit before polishing.
I've had good results with Meguiar's Ultimate Compound followed by Meguiar's Ultimate Polish.

Thanks for your replies. It’s certainly shiny and even but it needs a sanding. L. So much orange peel! I already messed it up a bit with my nail, but I won’t re-cost at this point. I will leave it in the car for a bit and sand it in a couple of days. You can see the difference with the other pieces, and that’s in the garage. It probably looks worse in the daylight

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.jag...e575f9eaa.jpeg
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.jag...38d7155f5.jpeg
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.jag...246cf3dc2.jpeg

Good on you for giving it a go. Unfortunately your photos are so blurry it's hard to tell what's orange peel and what's blur. But like Petemohr says, you want to use something much finer than #600 for the final sanding before buffing. And you can never have too many coats of lacquer. (Well, okay, technically you can....)
Is the airbag wood easy to remove? (So annoying that the glovebox was deleted....)

Reasonably easy, yes. Simple or quick? No. The entire dash and steering wheel ( including disarming the drivers side airbag with a special tool) needs to come out before the passenger side airbag wood can be removed.

So much just to get that slab off? Must be held on by some special system--considering it's supposed to fly off when the airbag goes off, guess it's not just a matter of prising it out of the backing....

It's a bolted to an aluminum substrate that hinges out of the way when the airbag goes off. You need access to the backside to gain access to the bolts that hold the wood panel on.

I wet sanded it with the 600 and then 2000 and that fixed it. Not perfect but certainly blends in
now with the rest of the original stuff, which incidentally does have some very light orange peel. The biggest thing that stands out is the color which is darker on the piece I retouched.

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.jag...922ce8d47.jpeg
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.jag...c5b469db6.jpeg