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Only your finisher knows for sure

Over the last week or two there has been several questions by new builders as to how to level French polished finish, how to buff French polish finish and how to fill pin holes in French polish finishes. There are no dumb question to ask so please do not take the following as any kind of inference in that vein.

I recently took a weekend trip with my wife to a small town in the hill country of central Texas. While there we stopped in at a hand crafted furnisher shop that advertised hand rubbed French polished finishes.

After visiting with the proprietor for a half hour, and him discovering that I was a luthier that French polished many of my commissions he invited me back to his shop that evening to witness his French polish technique.

When I got there He had a chair in a spray both and proceeded to spray a 3# cut of shellac over the poly filled mahogany rocker. After three fairly wet coats about 20 min apart. He took a felt pad fairly drenched in alcohol and sprayed just a bit of shellac on it and begin to quickly sprit the surface to knock down the unevenness of the sprayed film. Once finished, he moved the chair into an array of IR lights about 36” away from the chair. He told me it would stay there over night and the next day he would buff out with med., fine, and extra fine compound.

Being a gracious guest and quit intrigued with his process I said nothing but only observed. Shortly before we left the shop he asked me what I thought of his French polish process. Continuing my good behavior I said “quit interesting”, but I have to admit that was not what I was thinking. Diane and I left shortly there after to go to dinner after first thanking our host for the tour.

This is all leading to a point, and that being, it is appearing that many people are applying shellac finishes with many different application techniques and calling it French polish. There is nothing at all wrong with the different applications processes. My contention is with calling it French polish.

French polish in my book is a technique of applying shellac and solvent with a pad or muneca (rag doll) in a hand buffing motion to amalgamate the film into one single and contiguous compressed mass. Spraying or brushing on shellac is just that, a sprayed or brushed shellac finish. Again there is nothing wrong with any kind of shellac finish. However to call it French polish is incorrect and misleading.

I will step down from my soap box now
MichaelP38643.5055902778

Yeah, as Robbie O'Brien has said here before (and we both heard in the Brune french polish class)... French polishing is a method, not a finish.

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Jonathan Kendall, Siloam Springs AR

You can buff a guitar that was french polished, though... And you can level it with 1200grit sandpaper between sessions.

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Jonathan Kendall, Siloam Springs AR

Yes you can, and yes it is still a French polish finish. However it should not be necessary to sand or buff, even to achieve a very high gloss finish.

My personal thoughts about sanding French polish has to do with entrapment of sanding residue in the film. If the only component of the sanding residue was the shellac solids I would have no issues. but being that there are bits of aluminum or silica oxide left behind. I choose not to sand French polished films
MichaelP38643.51625

Language is mutable.

There is the "technique" of french polish, which we all know.

Then there is the "finish" french polish, which implies some kind of finish made of alcohol, shellac, and perhaps other ingredients, applied in any ole way. For example, there is the "Bulls Eye French Polish" finish.

No one expects a rocking chair to be padded by hand with the traditional technique, unless you are paying $1000 for the finish job.

It's a matter of communicating what is important to the customer. Your average (or not so average) rocking chair customer really doesn't care if a chair is polished in the traditional way. They just want to know what the finish is and what it looks like. "French polish" communcates that.

How should the chair seller advertise his product:

1) Hand rubbed, french polished rocking chair.

2) Sprayed shellac/alcohol mixture, felt pad rubbed, IR cured, hand buffed with Mezenema compounds rocking chair.

I vote #1. Now, if specifially asked what the application technique is, I'd expect any honest person to answer #2.


Furthermore, what did his chairs look like? If they looked like a FP chair, then who cares what the technique is, so long as the price is reasonable?

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Edited to add: Or to put it another way, "french polish" is both a noun and a verb. The noun refers to the alcohol/resin mix, and the verb refers to the technique. This is according to the OED, which is a quite definitive dictionary.

Therefore I will continue to use the term 'french polish' for the spirit varnish itself, as it is entirely correct to do so.

Since most of you probably don't have online access to the OED, here is the entry:

[quote]1. A polish for wood-work (see quot. 1874).

1819 P.O. Lond. Direct. 367 Wheeler, T., Warehouse for Bentley & Co's French Polish. 1874 KNIGHT Dict. Mech. I. 915 French polish, a solution of resin or gum resin in alcohol or wood naptha.[/quote]rlabbe38643.5213773148

Ah but the Bulls Eye FP is intended to be applyed in the french polish application format. That is the reason for the oil in the formula. If you spray this formula it is not a french polish finish.

Well, now the obvious question needs to be asked...

If an Englishman is polishing that way, would he call it a French Polish? Certainly not!
Would it then be an English Polish? I doubt that too.
How about if someone such as I were using that form of polish,
would it be a Heinz-57 Polish?
No, that doesn't work well either.
Now if a person born in Poland were to do it, would it be a Polish Polish?
No, because now that looks rather redundant.
So I say if a Frenchman isn't doing it, then it can't be French.
It must be a Faux-French Polish.

Well...off MY soapbox now...



Don Williams38643.5318634259

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

His chair looked like a buffed finish. not a hand rubbed. Like I said I am not in any way dicounting the finish. However I grew up with a grandfater that passed on to me and my father the art in (my opinion) of French polishing, both furnisher and guitars. I do not feel that a finish simply because its solids are shellac constitutes a French polish finish. There is to my eyes a very noticable differance in the depth of a French polish finish and a sprayed shellac finish of near equal mil thickness. I believe it is due to the solids being more densly packed form the continious melting and remelting of the solids during the boding sessions.JMO

[QUOTE=Don Williams] Well, now the obvious question needs to be asked...

If an Englishman is polishing that way, would he call it a French Polish? Certainly not!
Would it then be an English Polish? I doubt that too.
How about if someone such as I were using that form of polish,
would it be a Heinz-57 Polish?
No, that doesn't work well either.
Now if a person born in Poland were to do it, would it be a Polish Polish?
No, because now that looks rather redundant.
So I say if a Frenchman isn't doing it, then it can't be French.
It must be a Faux-French Polish.

Well...off MY soapbox now...



[/QUOTE]


roling on the floor

Personally I'm proud of our European finish and think it's about time an import imbago was put on you North American folks using it

By the way, if you were clever enough and could apply it via a muncea attached to your foot, would it become French Shoe Polish?

Don - wouldn't you have to have a French mother and Polish father or vice versa to technically comply?Dave White38643.5361458333

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Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

Yes Dave it would. Unless, of course, if Don had his way, and you were
doing the polishing, it would be an English Faux French Shoe Polish
Polish.
Craig

By the way, don't play a French Polished guitar too close to Germany - it might get invaded!

Sorry poor taste joke

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Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

we kinda got off what I was trying to say. Looking back I did not do a good job of pointing this out. My intention was to bring up the question as to if the builders having issues with leveling French polish finishes were refering to French polished applied finish or shellac applied in someother manner.

In any case IMO to advertise as French polish finish, is to by iferance imply finish applied in the traditional French polish application method.

While Roger is correct on the noun / verb issue, in this day and time French polish is used as a discriptive noun or name for the process. in truth it is a verb but in practice( at leaset in the luthierie world).

MichaelP38643.5656828704

[QUOTE=MichaelP] we kind agot off what I was trying to say. Looking back I did not do a good job of pointing this out. My intention was tobring up the question as to if the builders having issues with leveling French polish finishes were refering to French polished finish or shellac applied in someother manner.

In any case IMO to advertise as French polish finish, In my opinion is to by iferance imply finish applied in the traditional French polish application.[/QUOTE]

Sorry for being frivolous Michael - I can't resist sometimes.

I agree with you - there are shellac finishes and their is a technique of applying shellac usually called French Polishing. There are of course lots of shades in between. I have a finish where I apply French Polish by muncea and then put on top coats of Tru-oil. Sometimes the FP shellac coat is thin and the True-oil thicker, in otheres its a fuller FP with only a couple of Tru-oil coats.

Also when I've had trouble with the finish applied with a muncea, I've sanded/leveled out with micromesh lubricated with artists lemon-oil and then gone on with the muncea - is this a true FP finish? In other cases I've levelled using the muncea.

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Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

I don't feel that sanding or buffing takes away in any form. I to have sanded with micromesh. (no silca oxide left be hind with micromesh). On some rare ocations I to have had a muneca tht would stick so I allowed the film to set and sanded down with micromesh, but never with P paper

To me the thing that sets FP hand rubbed apart is the compresion of the solids by melting and remelting during the boding. This gives a depth to the finish that I don't see in sprayed or brushed films. If you apply the shellac in a hand buffed cicular motion with some solvent, no mater what your exact formula. It is a hand rubbed French polished finish.

Hey Michael,

You forgot the third category - The beginner who is attempting to french polish using the traditional technique and a muneca, but still winds up with a crappy surface that he tries to fix with a light sanding.

For $50 I will wipe down with a paper towel any guitar sent to me, and you can advertize in confidence that you're selling a fully french polished guitar.

I could lacquer my guitars and call them french polished. My friends who know nothing of guitar finishes think I'm being arrogant when I say I am "French polishing" a guitar. ..

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Instagram: @jfrenchluthier
Web: https://www.jfrenchguitars.com/

Hi Michael

Is it French Polish if you grain fill with anything other the traditional way ?

Oh yes. While pumice may be the common traditional method you may be suprised as to some of the very early method of pore filling. Some were some nasty things and others like egg whites and hide glue (more less) have been used for a century and more. I use to really like pumice fills but have to addmit to getting lazy and converting to Zpoxy for most every thing now.

Here again to me the big thing is that by rubbing using the shellac and solvent melt and remelt the shellac, there by copressing it as you go. If you do this with a machine it would in my eyes be French polished. Almost anything that for lack of a beter term kneads the film into on contigious mass will render the depth and warmth of a french polished finish.MichaelP38643.6042939815

Back to the original topic. I'd say no it's not a "French polished" finish as French polishing is simply a method of applying shellac. It's a shellac finish. If someone did this on a guitar and sold it to me as French polished I'd be slightly miffed.

But I like the idea of sending them all to Joshua!

Colin

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

Collin I will do them for nothing, but like telemarketer's I make up for it with shipping and handeling

Gee I wish I could speal MichaelP38643.6071990741

Thanks Michael, I had assumed that they had always used pumice. I didn't realise there were other methods.

I must confess when I'm talking to customers about finish, I usually describe mine as Shellac finishes. Not French Polished.

One more thought,

If someone other than a Frenchman were to polish like that, it can't be a Faux French Polish, since the word Faux itself is French. Therefore it has to be renamed something like "Fake French Polish" or "Frenchesque Polish".
And the other issue with a Polish Polish is that it obviously results in either polishing the polish (or is that polishing the Polish?), or a polish that is twice as thick. And we all know how we luthiers disdain thick finishes.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."