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It's been many years since I french polished a guitar. Back then I followed the instructions on the Milburn website. I'm getting ready to spit coat and the original instructions, which I printed at the time, called for just shellac applied with a folded square of t-shirt. I noticed that in the updated instructions on their website they are calling for a drop of oil to be added to the cloth for the spit coat. I thought oil doesn't get used until the bodying sessions. I wold think that you would not want oil to come into contact with the bare wood. Am I wrong?

I just flood the wood with a square of cloth, over and over till I think it is sealed well.
That usually raises the grain some, and I'll sand it with 320, and seal it again.
Then I fill the grain if it is open grain wood.
Next I seal it again, to seal in the filler ( I use oil based silex filler ).
I don't use (olive) oil till I'm building, and the pad needs something to keep from dragging.

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My intuition would agree with yours, I don't think oil would be good on bare wood.

Probably a bad idea to get a non-drying oil like olive soaked into the wood. But according to Eugene Clark (via Somogyi book) walnut oil can be mixed in with the spit coat shellac to "clear" the wood, giving it a deeper, oiled look.

So, depends on the oil, and how you want it to look.

Thanks for the replies. I've decided to do it without the oil, like I did the last time. Wendy