Applying finish to the sides (French Polish)

20211225

Merry Christmas! Everyone!

So I continue with the FP of the sides.
The problem is with the holding of the guitar while the sides are being polished.
So I managed to come out with clamping in the vise, using 2 piece of wood as the caul.
It held quite sturdy and allows me to access from one of the sides to the back.
When I polish the other side, I will take out and flip the entire guitar over.
Once this is settled, I began to FP the sides; the process is essentially the same as the back.

Holding the guitar with vise.

FP the sides

Shine started to form

20220101

Happy New Year 2022! Everyone.

Hope this new year will be a great year for everyone.

So I continue to polish the side until satifactory.
Next will be the neck and head.

The shine on the sides are quite ok now.

Ebony binding looks nice under FP

The back finish is really good. Can see the reflection.

Can see the contrast between the polished surface and bare wood (in the sound port)

FInal looks

Final looks

Applying finish to back (French Polish)

20211218
Next will be the back.
So the same procedure: surface preparation (sanding), bodying (accumulating the finish), polish (for making it shine), spiriting off burnishing (compact the finish).
The last step will be burnishing the polish to compact and make the back shine.

The back was sanded in increasing grits: 80 120 240 320 400 800 1000.
At the last grit you can see the back surface started to show a abit of shine under the reflection.
Once that is done, I can start to the next process of bodying.
For the back during the polish stage I use pumice to fill in the pores.
Normally for some other process, the pore is filled first using epoxy resing such as zpoxy.
However, I just use the traditional method of pumice instead.
The effect works just fine.
Due to the surface being flat without hindrance polishing the back was much easier.

Sanding the back surface.

Can see the faint shine already

Another angle of the surface

Bodying

Polishing, can see the pores

After some pore filling using pumice

20211222
The process continues until the level of shine is achieved.
After one round of polishing, I apply oil and sand with 400 grit lightly to level the surface even.
THen continue to polish.

Before level sanding the surface

Level sanding with 400 grit and oil

Level sanding

Much better after level sanding, Continue polishing to shine

Good shine.

Applying finish to top (French Polish)

20211016
I began to sand the top for the finish.
Basically how good the result of the finish will be determined by the surface preparation.
Before that I also repair he rosette which had part of the tiles torn out during the planing of the rosette to level with the top.

Repairing the rosette

Repairing the rosette

20211020
Then I began to body the shellac onto the top.
After sometime in the bodying of the shellac, I started to polish.
I use some mineral (non-drying) oil for the lubricant

After sanding the top

Achieve some shine when I started polishing

20211027
As I continue the polishing I noticed some surface weren't as leveled as I had wished.
The uneven surface is quite prominent under the finish.
So I must decide to carry on or to redo the finish.
So I chose the latter and began to sand down the shellac.
Boy, the shellac sure gum up the sand paper easily.
I had a hard time sanding to bare wood.

Imperfections in the surface.

After sanding the surface

After sanding the surface

20211113
Next back to restart the bodying then polishing of the top.
I also took the opportunity to fill the rosette pores with epoxy.
This to have a better even surface on the rosette.

Achieve the shine a little by little

Lower bout

Rosette area

The medullary grains looks much better under shellac

Shine forming

2021204
The final shine was done after a few weeks of polishing.
Not perfect but still ok.
The top was harder to polish due to the presence of the bridge
However, I chose to glue the bridge first for sound tuning purpose before finishing.
So the finish quality had to be compromised a bit for the sake of the sound quality.

Checking the reflection

Getting better

Checking the shine reflection

Acceptable shine

Final shine!

Finishing the guitar

20180710
After 2 years of playing the guitar, I finally get around to start finishing the guitar.
The string broke so I removed the string and started the finishing process properly.

The sound has developed to be very good.
In terms of sonoriy I would rate it the best amongst my guitar. (2nd is followed by Guitar #5)
Other guitars were generally great at the trebles but OK at the bass sonority.
This guitar has both clarity, separation and great bass sonority.
I attribute this to the bracing and the low air resonance.

First I sanded the top even with various grits: 150, 240, 320, 400, 800, 1500.
Then I pore filled the rosette ring with CA glue.
I tape up those areas which I don't want to coat with shellac.
Finally I coated the surface with thin coats of shellac without any oils.
I noticed some patches of unevenness on the rosette area which means I did not sand it even after the pore filling.
Likely I will need to remove the base coat of shellac in particularly the rosette area.
But the grain really pops out after the shellac is applied

After sanding the top with various grits

Pore filled the rosette with CA glue

Applied a the base coat of shellac.

20180713
More FP in progress the shellac building up slowly.

Slowly building up the shellac. Look at the silking on the top (medullary rays)

Another view

Look at the rosette, the grain starting to pop out

More FP in progress, beginning to get some shine

Starting to get the shine

20180724
Some more polishing to go.
The shellac build is good but after spiriting off I lost some of the shine.
Hmm I am supposed to burnish the surface to compact the shellac but with the bridge in place it's kind of hard to do that.
The excess oil were removed with paper towel.
Those hard to reach area (e.g. bridge area, area besides the fingerboard) are easier to reach if I put a coin into the mueca during the polishing.

Shine is there but I will need to level sand the surface

20180731
I level sand the surface using oil and 800 grit.
Then I followed up with more polishing.
The effect looks much better

After level sanding with 800 grit and oil

The surface is smoother after the level sanding.

More polishing

20180920
I began to finish the back.
I stopped a while as I was thinking what to use to finish the back.
In the end I decided to use shellac.
Pore filling with dust wasn't working out too well.
In the end I use pumice.
The trick to use pumice is not to apply too much of it.
If too much is used it will get tacky and discoloured.
When that happens use more alcohol to level it out.

After a few bodying session, the coat builds up fine.
I polished a bit and things looking good.
I level sand a bit in between.
Some pores are still quite visible so I just a bit more pumice to fill them.
That's the good thing about using FP and pumice to pore fill; you can always go back and do it any time.

After a few bodying sessions.

Pumice

20180927
After a few sessions of polishing this is how it looks.
I level sanded a few times.
There are some along grain graduations though so when I do spirit off I did it in a traverse direction.
It did level it a bit so i think i will continue a few sessions to level them.

After a few sessions of polishing

Can see the reflections