Fretboard cleaning issue

[anzoid]

I have just taken possession of a rather nice Steinberger Spirit XZ-2 - the one with the body. It was kinda grungy enough that I decided to give it a good clean up. The frets have come up nicely with a bit of fret polish and look great. I used some lemon oil (Dunlop 65) on the rosewood board and the result is... odd. The oil hasn't soaked into the wood evenly - it's like there was some coating on the fretboard. Where the strings touch the fretboard the oil has gone, but the wood between the strings is kind of resisting the oil and there's still oil sitting there which I keep wiping off. What have I done wrong? I didn't use much oil at all - couple of drops and then used my fingers to spread it around. Under the strings the fretboard is less shiny now than between the strings.

Should I use something else on the wood to remove the oil I put on plus whatever the coating might be? Steel wool? Fine grade sandpaper? Don't want to wreck the fretboard, but would prefer that it was unifrom in looks - the oil I guess will eventually disappear either into the wood, or onto my fingers when I play... but never had a partially matte, partially gloss fretboard before, and don't really like it much...

[Thunderbird]

Leave the lemon oil to soak for a while then gently massage it into the wood with a soft tooth brush then wipe off the excess that should do the trick 

[anzoid]

That's great, thank you! Will give that a go. Would overnight be too long with the oil on the board?

[Thunderbird]

19 hours ago, anzoid said:

That's great, thank you! Will give that a go. Would overnight be too long with the oil on the board?

Overnight is fine it will only soak in and just wipe off the excess in the morning

[anzoid]

All sorted I think - left overnight, wiped off the finish is definitely more even. It's still kinda "sweating" a bit of oil - which it was doing before, but I can just wipe that off. The fretboard is definitely looking more even. Now I just need to learn to dress frets to sort out some buzz after lowering the action Fun times.

Thanks for your help!

[Thunderbird]

1 hour ago, anzoid said:

All sorted I think - left overnight, wiped off the finish is definitely more even. It's still kinda "sweating" a bit of oil - which it was doing before, but I can just wipe that off. The fretboard is definitely looking more even. Now I just need to learn to dress frets to sort out some buzz after lowering the action Fun times.

Thanks for your help!

No problem happy to help 👍