We have pine floors (not sure if its heart of pine or yellow pine - in Eastern Nebraska) that are 95 years old. We just paid to have them redone (main floor and treads plus a landing). There are really bad swirls on the treads and the landing. I told the contractor that we were unhappy with the swirls and he said to bad. That the swirls can not be helped because of 'pitch in the pine'.
It looks to me that they didn't sand the stairs to a fine enough grit and he claims they did their best because the paper gets full of pitch after sanding just a few inches with the finer grit sand paper.
So did he not sand my floors to a high enough grit or is this for real? We never noticed any swirling like this before. Its on very step and the landing is very bad.

The rest of the floors look fantastic by the way.
Thanks for any help.

How can the contractor justify that the pitch is the problem on the steps & landing , but there was no problem on the rest of the floor? I am assuming the main floor , steps and landing are all the same batch of wood? I guess it could be possible that there's more pitch on the steps and landing ?

Sand & Finish is not my expertise, but there's something fishy here.

Did the same guy do the edger work on the steps and landing, that did the rest of the floor? Maybe they didnt graduate to a finer grit on the stairs and landing? Regardless of what the reasons are, I wouldnt be happy with the contractor's response, or the swirl marks.

When edging a narrow area like a stair tread, it is impossible to fully prepare the wood without additional hand scraping and sanding of the wood prior to finishing.
Sounds like it was a rush job on this portion of the work, and should be redone.