Advice on Finishing Top

[Zen]

Sounds good John, So by applying these light coats and using long strokes instead of the figure of eight method that I was attempting to use, you are still getting enough shellac on to the top. I am going to try this method and once again Thank you for sharing.
Rusty

[johnnparchem]

The long strokes are not instead of; Each time I charge the pad with shellac I do long with the grain strokes followed by figure 8s or a tighter looping pattern and then long strokes again. I spirit off just with long strokes. Where I said swirl in my previous post you can loop figure 8

lightly apply the shellac with long ways strokes. I keep applying until things get a little sticky. At that point I put a drop of oil on the muneca and use small swirls to cover the surface I am working on, usually a few times. As the pad dries out and it is harder to swirl, I try to get rid of the swirls with relatively hard long ways strokes until the surface looks pretty good and there are few swirls and very few streaks.

[Zen]

The long strokes are not instead of; Each time I charge the pad with shellac I do long with the grain strokes followed by figure 8s or a tighter looping pattern and then long strokes again. I spirit off just with long strokes. Where I said swirl in my previous post you can loop figure 8

lightly apply the shellac with long ways strokes. I keep applying until things get a little sticky. At that point I put a drop of oil on the muneca and use small swirls to cover the surface I am working on, usually a few times. As the pad dries out and it is harder to swirl, I try to get rid of the swirls with relatively hard long ways strokes until the surface looks pretty good and there are few swirls and very few streaks.

Got That now

Thanks John

[Zen]

The advise I got here from johnparchem regarding using long strokes initially with the pad/ muneca to load up some shellac, is one of the best tips I have found when starting to french polish the top. Before now I usually started in one corner with swirls and figure of 8 polishing but now I find that using a well loaded pad and long strokes from top to bottom to load up a little shellac on the body and then proceed to "polish" seems to work much better. Its now going on nice and smooth with no problems so now all I need to decide on is how many sessions before I stop applying shellac. John recommends 8 coats/sessions I think but I'm at 4 at the moment. Also , spiriting off ever couple of coats is important. Thanks for that John and also to all who chipped in.
Rusty

[Zen]

Hi guys
I have almost completed the finishing process on my dreadnought acoustic.
While sanding and shaping the headstock I found a flaw in the wood right on the side edge. Hopefully this pic will explain and if anyone has any suggestions please let me know. I dont want to start sanding indefinitely in the hope that I will eventually get down to clean wood, as I'm already down as far as I can comfortably go with removing wood. The faceplate is ebony. Is it possible that it will look ok when I have finished it with wipe on poly as thats what I'm using on the neck

Thanks
Rusty

[justrfb]

Hello Rusty.
Looks like a knot in the wood... To me it is a character mark. I have a knot in the middle of the neck on my first built. I fretted (pun intended) and decided it looks cool (not many, if any guitars have it on their necks...) and makes my first built just that, my first built... I look at these characteristics as "perfect" imperfections. I would leave it be... Good luck.

Sincerely,
Rich

[Zen]

Hello Rusty.
Looks like a knot in the wood... To me it is a character mark. I have a knot in the middle of the neck on my first built. I fretted (pun intended) and decided it looks cool (not many, if any guitars have it on their necks...) and makes my first built just that, my first built... I look at these characteristics as "perfect" imperfections. I would leave it be... Good luck.

Sincerely,
Rich

Thanks for that Rich and I think you are correct--I will leave it in as a feature and continue my finishing process.

The one other problem I have found now is that my Holly binding comes up very white after sanding and I will have to find a stain of some sort to darken it down to match the rosewood so its one step forward forward and two steps back ha ha. I did try bleeding the rosewood into the holly while sanding etc but it looked awful. I'm using wipe on poly as a finish for the first time and I like it so far

Rusty

[johnnparchem]

The one other problem I have found now is that my Holly binding comes up very white after sanding and I will have to find a stain of some sort to darken it down to match the rosewood so its one step forward forward and two steps back ha ha. I did try bleeding the rosewood into the holly while sanding etc but it looked awful. I'm using wipe on poly as a finish for the first time and I like it so far

Rusty

Maybe just wipe down the holly bindings and the rosewood with some shellac maybe even an amber shellac before the poly, it will add an amber cast to the holly, you will not notice it on the rosewood. Also it will tie the binding to the FP top. Easy to try with out any non reversible harm.

[Zen]

Thanks you John, I was about to try that but as usual I suffer from "paralysis by analysis" ha ha
Old age is another name for it.
Cheers
Rusty

[Zen]

Just a quick update on the finishing process using Wipe on Poly on the back and sides. Its my first experience with the poly and I think I'm hooked. It goes on even easier than tru oil and leaves a great finish. I'm not looking for glass or gloss even though it comes close enough. Afterwards I decided to top it off with a wax I had tried in the past called Renaissance Wax, a formula that's used in the British Museum on priceless furniture pieces and I had read a lot of commentary about it on different forums.
It worked really well is all I can say and just 2 coats brought the rosewood up to a nice acceptable shine. I like that the fact that it gives added protection and the back and sides can be revived at any time in the future with a couple of coats.
Thanks so much for all the great tips along the journey and I will post a couple of pics shortly when its all completed
Rusty