Thanks everyone for the thoughts. I am doing a bit of scraping on it right
now. I sanded a leg to 60 grit and dyed it in spots with the dye, I also
coated it in other spots with some Watco Black Walnut I had laying around.
It just all turned yucky...maybe a few coats, some sealer and some gel
stain would have worked but I don't know. This is not what I expected...but
a test spot of the black polyshades looked to cover everything. So I'm
thinking after resanding back to about 220 going with black polyshade legs
and aprons and as Frank said, the poly will stand up to abuse. I'm going to
continue with Jewitt's procedure I appended to the email at the beginning
for the table tops. Instead of his final seal I may do a satin poly of some
kind as well...just to enable more abuse at the TV where these empty
nesters often find ourselves dining.

I'll send pics when I'm done. You'll have to ignore the legs and aprons as
they were turned out on a Shopsmith in the early 90s like I said...and I
hadn't trained the gerbils yet to spin the treadle that I power it with
now. But the tops and the end table drawers were done in galoot fashion
other than the sanding. I think SWMBO will ultimately be pleased when they
are done. Not bad, started in about 91 to 92 but never finished the drawers
for the end tables (kept the drawer location turned toward the wall...tee
hee) and barring any issues finished in 2020 - so a 30 year project that's
not bad???

Scott in Duluth GA