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The big English estates had a resident french polisher, someone who would renew the finish on the furniture on a regular basis. (They would also polish the brass).

The whole point of instrument french polishing is to give an extremely thin finish that allows the wood to vibrate as much as possible. Since the top is the vibrating member, many classical makers will FP the top, but finish the back and sides with another, easier to apply and more durable finish.

I used to build boats and use epoxy resin in 55 gallon drums. The drum was about 400 pounds for 50 gallons (they aren't full) which makes a gallon weigh perhaps 7-1/2 pounds, or over 60 pounds a cubic foot. Brazilian Rosewood is about 55 lbs/ft3, so when you use epoxy as a grain filler on B+S you're actually increasing the weight of the piece more than if just wood had filled the grain. It always seemed a waste of time to FP such wood as you have already made it heavier with the filler.

Just sayin'

Ed

cool. i'll read that. I'm doing well but actually finishing it is a bit of an issue. haha. I messed up my finish on the top but I made a nice bridge. I'll fix it up within a week or so from here I bet. The back looks great so hopefully I'm close.

Bridge not glued on yet. I read that most wait till the finish is done but my 1980's stewmac catalog has an article mentioning that the bridge can/should be glued on before the finish is applied. I think it would work either way. Just gotta do some work to keep it smooth by the bridge.

For those of you using shellac, what color(s) are you using? And are you using different colors on the top vs the rest?

I'm a noob so follow Diane's recent post on french polishing which for me was by far the clearest and easiest to understand for a beginner going from brushing on shellac to poishing it.

The topic is too big for me to take in all the info. Her post goes from start to finish in a few paragraphs where everywhere else seems to have several hours of videos or multi volume book series.

I went from canned zinzer clear on my kit which came out nice. I switched to mixing my own from LMI. The light blonde (shellac1). Diane mentioned that she uses the regular blonde. I've read up on the various shellac sources and the colors they impart. Pretty neat.