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Hi. Do you put masking tape at the bridge position when french polishing? If not, is it easy to remove the polish in that area afterwards,or is it ok to glue the bridge on a polished surface?
/Häggis

Usually the sound-board is French polished without the bridge position masked. This allows nice unobstructed polishing paths -- going over the masking can cause streaking -- not good. After polishing, the area under the bridge MUST be scraped clean before gluing.

I recently french polished a top (for a steel string) and I did mask the bridge. I also didn't really know what I was doing.

The problem I had is buildup around the edge of the tape. I ended up with an area all the way around the bridge that is slightly thicker than the rest of your finish. This probably wouldn't be noticeable if you have a light build. Or if you mask far enough inside the edge, but that kind of defeats the purpose. Mine didn't look terrible, but were I to do it again, I would probably not mask it and would just scrape the finish off afterwards.

That said, if you read enough French Polishing tutorials, you will find one or two that call for masking the bridge.