sequoia
Well-known member
(Note: I apologize in advance for the long post. But I'm stoked about this stuff and I just got back from a holiday party where there was wine drinking.)
I was talking with a luthier friend of mine who uses this stuff called Buflex to final sand his instruments before polishing. In a nutshell, Buflex is a thin flexible abrasive latex film on a soft pad that is used to dry sand a finish to remove imperfections before using liquid polishing compounds and buffing out. It was developed for the aircraft and automotive industries. Before you sell a 54 million dollar airplane you want it to shine for the client and you want it to shine real nice but you don't want to pay for the labor thus: Buflex.
Now I'm not a super experienced finisher or guru (ha ha ha!), but I have used a lot of different compounds and techniques over the years. My father was an amatuer gunsmith and one of my chores as a child was to Tru-Oil his gunstocks for him. To this day I despise the smell of Tru-Oil which I associate with a small, damp room in the cellar and wasted afternoons when I could have been in the woods with my friends. I also finally discarded nitro cellulose laquer in total disgust due to its toxicity/flammability. Great stuff for a factory type setting or the luthier who kicks out lots of intruments which need to take the abuse, but for the hobbiest-small shop builder, not that practical.
Therefore, I've gone all in on shellac finishing. I won't call it French polishing because I omit many of the traditional steps that make up the technique (the rotten stone, the oil, the excrutiating boredom, the need to say "merde!" instead of "s**!" when things go bad, etc., etc.). One of the more monotonous stages in shellac finishing is the final level sand-out with decreasing coarseness of grits and it can be messy with all that water and grit everywhere as well as a nuisance buying, organizing and storing all those different grits. (What! I'm competely out of 2500 Micromesh! Merde!) So I got around today to using the stuff on an experimental uke since I didn't really have time to mess around and hey, it's just an experimental uke.
Here is how it went: The uke has a final cured out finish after many coats with sand-outs in between as per usual. All pores filled. Two final coats to give a glass-like finish before final level sand and polish. At this point I just went to Buflex green (~2500) and went after the imperfections. Much to my happy surprise it leveled what imperfections there were and didn't clog. As a matter of fact it didn't really matter with clogging. The aggressiveness was maintained no matter the build up. Every once in awhile I wiped off the build up and continued. Very fast and effective for all but the worst imperfections. Plus, at no time did I feel like I was in danger of sanding through. The pad allows just the right amount of pressure to take down the offending whatever.
I was done completely with the instrument in less than an hour (buffed out and looking buff) and no water/mess to clean up to say nothing of expensive sandpaper gone. I've only used it once and have much to learn, but I'm really liking it. Caution: Real expensive.
I was talking with a luthier friend of mine who uses this stuff called Buflex to final sand his instruments before polishing. In a nutshell, Buflex is a thin flexible abrasive latex film on a soft pad that is used to dry sand a finish to remove imperfections before using liquid polishing compounds and buffing out. It was developed for the aircraft and automotive industries. Before you sell a 54 million dollar airplane you want it to shine for the client and you want it to shine real nice but you don't want to pay for the labor thus: Buflex.
Now I'm not a super experienced finisher or guru (ha ha ha!), but I have used a lot of different compounds and techniques over the years. My father was an amatuer gunsmith and one of my chores as a child was to Tru-Oil his gunstocks for him. To this day I despise the smell of Tru-Oil which I associate with a small, damp room in the cellar and wasted afternoons when I could have been in the woods with my friends. I also finally discarded nitro cellulose laquer in total disgust due to its toxicity/flammability. Great stuff for a factory type setting or the luthier who kicks out lots of intruments which need to take the abuse, but for the hobbiest-small shop builder, not that practical.
Therefore, I've gone all in on shellac finishing. I won't call it French polishing because I omit many of the traditional steps that make up the technique (the rotten stone, the oil, the excrutiating boredom, the need to say "merde!" instead of "s**!" when things go bad, etc., etc.). One of the more monotonous stages in shellac finishing is the final level sand-out with decreasing coarseness of grits and it can be messy with all that water and grit everywhere as well as a nuisance buying, organizing and storing all those different grits. (What! I'm competely out of 2500 Micromesh! Merde!) So I got around today to using the stuff on an experimental uke since I didn't really have time to mess around and hey, it's just an experimental uke.
Here is how it went: The uke has a final cured out finish after many coats with sand-outs in between as per usual. All pores filled. Two final coats to give a glass-like finish before final level sand and polish. At this point I just went to Buflex green (~2500) and went after the imperfections. Much to my happy surprise it leveled what imperfections there were and didn't clog. As a matter of fact it didn't really matter with clogging. The aggressiveness was maintained no matter the build up. Every once in awhile I wiped off the build up and continued. Very fast and effective for all but the worst imperfections. Plus, at no time did I feel like I was in danger of sanding through. The pad allows just the right amount of pressure to take down the offending whatever.
I was done completely with the instrument in less than an hour (buffed out and looking buff) and no water/mess to clean up to say nothing of expensive sandpaper gone. I've only used it once and have much to learn, but I'm really liking it. Caution: Real expensive.
