Quote Originally Posted by Flying10uk View Post
If I want to clean up wood I will sometimes use wire/steel wool lubricated with methylated spirits, working along the grain. The meths will also help to remove oil and grease from the wood, if wiped away, but you may still need to use abrasive paper on problem areas such as blending in of steps. I'm surprised that more people don't use wire wool as an abrasive in wood refinishing because it can produce a fine finish. The wood would need to be left until all traces of the meths have evaporated before applying any further treatments. I haven't tried meths on a laminated stock so you would have to be careful and try a small area first just to make sure that the meths doesn't affect the laminate.
Steel wool does have it's uses and is often the last step in my refinishing projects, sometimes the first and only step. If I did a deep cleaning with some sanding, I'll use steel wool to shine it up between coats of BLOicon. If I'm not doing a deep cleaning but a light cleaning, I'll use steel wool soaked in BLOicon to get the old grunge off.

It does however have it's problems and it would not be practical on this particular stock. It's too rough and the wool fibers will tear out and imbed themselves into the wood splinters. This may be the case even after sanding just because of the condition of the wood. The oil saturation may have made it too soft to get that good shine on it.