French Polish getting cloudy

sequoia said:

Yes, yes. I too use brush on the early stages then switch to the nose/cloth thing as the layers start to build. The problem with brush applied at the later stages is the dreaded "little ridges" that can form. I hate the little ridges. Fixable of course, but lots of wet sanding recovery. I've pulled it off before, but it gets tricky and one must be almost an artist to lay it on. The perfect stroke. It works but maybe not for the neophyte tyro.

Click to expand...

It's more usually termed spirit varnishing but I guess it depends on how much you put on with a brush and how much you put on with the pad.
The method for spirit varnishing is to brush all the coats on, can be as many as 16 or even more. Watery thin shellac. Seems like a lot of work until you realise that one coat takes less than 5 minutes to put on. You don't even need to clean or wash the brush. It's all left to harden for a couple of weeks or so and then you go through the grits and polishing compounds. You can get it looking like glass should you wish. I don't do that because I'm not fond of that glass like look, it's a bit too hard and cold looking for my tastes. I get all the coats on and rub down with something like 600 or 800G. That's it, just the one grit. Of course it leaves all sorts of scratches in the finish which is where the pad comes in. Very thin shellac padded on in very straight lines, probably over a couple of days. The shellac fills in all the scratches and the cloth leaves very feint but straight lines in the polish. Just enough to knock off the edge and avoid a very glassy looking surface. Takes a bit of practice but it's a pretty quick way of finishing an instrument to near full gloss.
The modern method of French polishing also seems to go through all the grits. It's not really how it was done in the classic method. They would finish with the cloth too, not polishing compounds and buffing. I guess it all depends on what type of look you want to achieve.
This is just about my limit, glossy but there's a touch of softness to it.

Michael, fanx for the run down. Do you glue the bridge after finishing? I glue mine before because I don't like scraping off the finish, but the bridge being there complicates polishing a lot. As does the fretboard.

After. I go around with bridge with the scalpel, then scrape it off. I find that easier than trying to polish around a bridge. Except when I'm using a wipe on oil finish, it's easy to polish around a bridge with an oil finish, gives you so much more time.

Yes, thanks for the rundown Michael. Whatever works. I like the picture of the finish. I'm a sucker for shiny myself. I do however agree that it can reach ridiculous lengths of glossiness. I mean, is it necessary to sand to 100,000 grit? I don't think so. I have settled on about 3500 and I'm good with that. The question to me is not how shiny the finish is, but how thick the stuff is. Anybody can slather a thick armored coat of shellac on and polish it to mirror brightness. The challenge to me is keeping it reasonably thin and yet bright and protective. Below pix polished out to about 3,000. Not to buffed and it is quite thin. I'm happy and the ukes sound great.

Yes. Many think it's the absolute height of F'polishing, rub it down and buff it until it's good enough to see Pluto. It's pretty easy if you put enough stuff on in the first place. Hard to see how it can go wrong. It's much harder to finish with the cloth and produce a good finish though. Somehow it's seen as being inferior and showing less skill. It's the other way around if you ask me. Then again I was taught by an old school French polisher who decried the abrasive polishing method.

Update on the Cloudiness....
He sanded it and rubbed it down a couple more times and it took care of it...
It looks great now.. very nice.. Thanks for all the input...