Thread: storing hard shellac

I received my Everclear alcohol yesterday and mixed up some regular shellac and hard shellac with it and compared it to those mixed with the denatured stuff and the Everclear beat the others hands down. Both mixes worked so I`m thinking that veneering was the problem as I gave the shellac a good shake before diluting. I`m able to get much thinner and smoother coats with the Everclear than with the denatured alcohol. I`ve been trying to get the hang of french polishing for some time now and it seemed like I was getting to much build, to soon on the surface than I should. It`s one of those skills that it sure would help to have someone who knows the art, to point out your mistakes as you go. I`m going to work on several more samples with the Everclear, I want to see if it makes using pumice as a grain filler any easier and I want to see how it does spraying. One other benefit of the Everclear is almost no odor, the wife might let me bring my work indoors during the cold months. I`ll keep you posted on how the new samples go. Thanks for the help!Mike

Mike,

French polishing would definitely be a WHOLE lot easier to learn with some standing there showing you how to do it. Unfortunately there are as many variations on the technique as there are people doing french polishing. It's a matter of trying different variations on technique and finding the one(s) that work for you. Eg. Some people use pumice while bodying up...people use different oils as lubricant....some people apply the oil to the face of the pad..Ive seen more than one person apply a coat of oil to a guitar top during bodying up....load from the back of the pad or load from the face...level back using wet and dry....endless variations and options.

But you know what? This is what makes FP fun...

Cheers Martin

Good evening Gent's,
I have french polished a lot of furniture and worked along side some of Melbourne's best polishers at one time ,I am a cabinet maker not a polisher by trade. The quick way to ruin a polish job is with the oil,it's the amount that's put on and not taken off that can cause crazeing ,or it turns white if put on when the grain is still open and not taken out,

I think this thread isn't mainly about oil problems,and I haven't used ubeut products yet,but want to soon.
we only use linseed oil, boiled or raw and if i were doing a guitar back and it was time to start finishing off with oil I would dip a finger in to my little jar of oil and hold it over the back and let one drop fall on to the job,with a dry finger I would dip it into that drop and tap that finger in the four quarters of the back,that should be enough ,if not 50 % more,any more is to much,with an older used rubber that lets out less polish and a thinned mix approx 15% shellac the rest metho finish off, add more metho to the mix as you go with light straight strokes ,hope this can help.regards Rob.

Rob, I`ll take all the help I can get, I`m using paraffin oil with the hard shellac because that`s what Neil suggests. The Everclear has made the biggest difference so far, I tried using it for pumicing today and got better results in a lot less time and didn`t have to use as much muscle which is good for my shoulder. I did a second sample and mixed sawdust, that I had made with a coarse disc on my orbital, with the pumice and found that to speed things up even more. It looks pretty messy at first, I sprinkled a fair amount on the surface got the rubber pretty moist with alcohol and went from one edge of the board to the other using a circular motion. I put a new cover on, more alcohol and made another pass, kept doing that until it was pretty clean, then did a final cleanup using lengthwise srokes across the grain. I`m going to let that cure overnight give it a light sand and then start polishing.

Well I think if your an expert in four years time the last thing you will be putting in will be saw dust,I did a lot of experiments like that years back for short cuts,and they are worth trying out , but best work falls back to traditional quality materials and technique ,what is the wood you are trying to fill the grain in before you get a shine up? you may have said this before on this thread but I did not read all page one before I did my first reply,and is it on a guitar or instrument? I am not going to type any more at the moment,2 am ,but would be happy to explain more later,hope I'm not doing the wrong thing by putting this on ,but if you want to see my polishing work go to www.robertbrown.com.au it's the stuff I make mainly with restoration work as well,regards Rob

Originally Posted by auscab

Well I think if your an expert in four years time the last thing you will be putting in will be saw dust,I did a lot of experiments like that years back for short cuts,and they are worth trying out , but best work falls back to traditional quality materials and technique ,what is the wood you are trying to fill the grain in before you get a shine up? you may have said this before on this thread but I did not read all page one before I did my first reply,and is it on a guitar or instrument? I am not going to type any more at the moment,2 am ,but would be happy to explain more later,hope I'm not doing the wrong thing by putting this on ,but if you want to see my polishing work go to www.robertbrown.com.au it's the stuff I make mainly with restoration work as well,regards Rob

Don`t know what I said to give you the impression I thought I was an expert and I`ve only been working at french polishing about a year. I`m using some mahogany scraps to work on and I am building electric guitars. I`ve been using lacquer but can`t hardly stand the fumes, tried a lot of other finishes but wasn`t happy with them. I always liked the look shellac gives the wood but until U-Beates hard shellac came along I didn`t feel comfortable using it for electric guitars. It does what Neil says and gets as hard as poly. I like the way pumicing fills the wood and looks but doing it the way I`ve read in tutorials online was aggrevating my already worn joints. I just figured since your trying to grind up some wood fibers when pumicing I might be able to speed things up and put less pressure on my joints by adding a very fine sawdust and it seems to work for me. I mixed it at about 2 parts pumice to 1 of sawdust. I hope my saying that I was using the paraffin over linseed oil didn`t mean I knew more than you, it`s just that Neil recommends it for the hard shellac and he makes the product. I`ve always had the mindset that no matter how many times I`ve done something a certain way with good results, there is always a better way. I appreciate any advice you can throw my way, the way you apply your oil sounds much better than what I`m doing,so I`m going to use your method. Thanks for the help, sorry if I gave the wrong impression.Mike

Originally Posted by auscab

Well I think if your an expert in four years time the last thing you will be putting in will be saw dust,

Ive successfully used the sawdust method for pore filling Indian Rosewood on my guitars. I brush on egg whites and then work up a sawdust/egg white paste on the wood surface using 320 grit garnet paper. I then work the paste into the pores using an old credit card.

I also use the pumice method for pore filling. I give the wood a couple of spit coats of shellac and then work the surface with a pounce which I periodically load by touching the pad onto pumice sprinkled on a piece of paper. The important thing here is not to add shellac to the pad...just alcohol and pumice.

Auscab's posts reinforce my comment that there are as many variations to FP methods as there are people french polishing.

Cheers Martin

Originally Posted by kiwigeo

Ive successfully used the sawdust method for pore filling Indian Rosewood on my guitars. I brush on egg whites and then work up a sawdust/egg white paste on the wood surface using 320 grit garnet paper. I then work the paste into the pores using an old credit card.

I also use the pumice method for pore filling. I give the wood a couple of spit coats of shellac and then work the surface with a pounce which I periodically load by touching the pad onto pumice sprinkled on a piece of paper. The important thing here is not to add shellac to the pad...just alcohol and pumice.

Auscab's posts reinforce my comment that there are as many variations to FP methods as there are people french polishing.

Cheers Martin

You had told me about that method in another thread and it worked quite well, there were several other suggestions by other members and I tried them all, some took some time to get the tecnique right, but in the end they all worked and I sure appreciate all the help. I continue to work with all the methods to see which ones work for different applications and experiment with some of my own ideas. I want to start staining the tops of some of my guitars but have to choose a fill method that doesn`t bleed the stain into the bindings. Lot of trial and error, mostly error, some tradional and some not but I enjoy the experimenting. Your input has really been helpfull Martin as has that of the other members, you folks have forgotten more about french polishing than I`ve learned, I`m gaining on it though.Mike P.S. It`s really good of Niel and U-Beaut to not only provide this forum but to take the time point to lost souls like myself in the right direction.

Mike, I should have put a few comma's in with the expert bit. last night it sounded to me like a waste of time,and that once you got the hang of polishing you would drop it . I tried saw dust years back but not with egg whites , we were trying to short cut filling the grain to speed up the polishing of oak side boards and extension tables,it didn't work ,but after reading Martin and your comments I have learn't something new,which is what I am here to do,I have a library of furniture books and have never come across it,I would like to know where it originates from Martin ,is it a luthier technique ? from one of your books?
My Father used to employ polishers in the family business that I work within, the oldest polisher started his apprentaship in 1914, when he started, he told us they would wipe the raw wood over with a filler made with whiting and oxide colour added to match the timber, when dry they would give a light sand and then wipe over with boiled liseed oil and let dry for a few days before they started with the shellac,this you can see in red ceder furniture from the 1860s on, the colour fades from the whiting and it stands out in the grain and sends the whole thing yellow. In the 1980s we used oil based grain filler out of a can for open grained timbers,if you didn't give it a coat of shellac first it came out like mud. with both these techniques it was shellac and pumice till it was flat ,then when dry a cut back with linseed oil and turps and 400 grit then a light body or two then linseed for finishing off, the biggest stuff ups were from burying the oil,there was one guy that kept doing it,a piece would come back ten weeks later white or crazed , to fix the problem a section at a time like the top of a chest of drawers would be wiped over with metho and set fire once or twice, as soon as it went out wipe the top with your finger and you can see the oil sitting on top,then wipe off with a rag,I will never forget the day they first showed us that.
The metho on fire trick works well on another problem, that is when an upper layer flakes off from a lower one, you see it when shellac has been put over semi gloss or gloss estapol and in other situations like oil based stains that have been left on to thick or polished to soon,set it on fire and the top will re bond to the lower,saves a strip and repolish.have to make sure it's a thin layer of meto ,not pooled ,these are things you probably wouldn't risk on an acoustic mabey,I once had to throw a table out a roller door with a five foot drop to the concrete, the top totaly in flames with black smoke every where,I was trying to lift out an oil based stain that was still wet,dumb boy.
goodnight regards Rob.

Originally Posted by auscab

I would like to know where it originates from Martin ,is it a luthier technique ? from one of your books?

Hi Rob,

The egg white pore filling method has been around for a while amongst the luthier community both here and in the US. I first learned about it from the US based Original Luthiers Forum and its been used by quite a few people who lurk on the Australian New Zealand Lutheirs Forum.

Egg white sizing of spruce lute and guitar tops goes back several hundred years. I use this technique when preparing furry spruce tops such as Engleman spruce for finishing.

Cheers Martin