Thread: A little help with french polish

well i would not buff french polish, i think it needs that soft hand technique, keep applying coats oof french polish till you get a wonderfull sheen, lightly sanding between coats, you want atleast 6 coats to get enough build...then a hand wax...

What you are doing isn't strctly french polishing. You are using shellac, which they use for french polishing.
It is a really nice finish however. If ya wanna you can get a swansdown mop from Neil, or some elbow grease, available locally I believe.

The pic below shows the Swansdown Mop being used in a drill to buff a table top that's what it is designed for. The buff is used up and down the length of the table going with the grain and leaves none of the buffing marks you would get with a conventional buff which will leave swirls on the surface of the work due to the circular action.

The 100 fold buff will spread to about 100 -110+mm (or more) across the face giving a wide stable buffing surface for large flat work, the 75 fold will spread to around 75mm and is more suited to smaller flat work on boxes etc.

Random orbital is not the way to go with buffing as it does not produce a positive buffing action it is a kind of wishy-washy action with no real guts or gusto to it. A wool buff or pad on a drill or proper buffing machine is much better because it has the positive action, but inevitably leaves swirls in the finish from the circular action of the tool, it is also very, very easy to burn the finish with one of these buffs and because they are usually synthetic (not real lambs wool) they often lease little bits of the synthetic fibres in the finish especially if used wrong and it softens the surface of the work.

A 100mm Swansdown Buff will cost you about 5-6 times more than a cheap artificial wool one but will do a much better job much quicker and with less likelihood of burning the work and will continue to work brilliantly for many, many, years to come.

Cheers - Neil
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That's just what I said.

Have Pm'ed my address for forwarding my share of the graft and corruption...................................Oh I mean gratitude for unsolicited testimonial.

Hi Joseph,

I was taught by my first woodturning teacher to buff turnings on the lathe with a lambswool bonnet and a small amount of wax. Drill turning at high speed.

It was easy to get globby build up by using too much wax, but then I just had to heat the globs up by speed and pressure to spread them out.

If you're doing furniture, then a quality wax like Ubeaut Trad'l Wax or Gilly Stephenson's cabinet makers wax, combined with the Swansdown mop is the way to go. Again, less is more.

now there you see...even i just learned a few things...

thanks a lot guys and thanks neil, i will be puchasing the Swansdown Buff this week as i dont trust those cheapie bunnings versions. Better spending a few extra bucks and be safe then sorry!