Official Luthiers Forum!

Ok I have 3 coats of 1lb Shellac mixed with 50% alcohol over Brazilian. I have Pumiced 1 time and did not do a good job I guess. I still see grain to fill (on the sides). I went down lighter pressure, circling, to open up the Shellac. Then circled back up with pressure to fill and back down the opposite circles from when I went down the first time. What am I doing wrong? Or how many times can I fill before having to put on another spit coat?
Or, do I strip it, fill with superglue and start over again?
Question 2
When do I "flat sand"? I am going from the Orville PDF File on French Polish. It mentions it but doesnt say when? After? Durring? Bodying sessions?
Thanks.

You can continue to pumice fill at any time during boding if you wish. If you are following the Millburn tutorial you continue to fill till you are happy. I am not sure what you mean by "going down"

It might help if I explained how the pumice fill mechanically works. First you want basically only the residual shellac in the inner pad. You don't want to be adding more wet shellac to the pad. Second you should be clearing each new load of pumice on the pad with alcohol till it is transparent. Pumice is an abrasive as you work it on the surface it penetrates the wash coat and pulls off micro fibers from the wood and your motion will deposit pumice, the wood fibers and melted shellac into the pores. The shellac hardens and is how the pore is filled.

Some woods have deeper and wider pores than others. It makes take several sessions to get the pores completely filled. Rosewoods have deep pores and it has taken me as many as 5 sessions to get a complete fill on IRW with pumice. This type of pore fill is a labor intensive process. The odds are you may not be doing any thing wrong but rather you are just not finished yet.

I just tried filling the pores with pumice and I really didn't care for it as I probably didn't have them filled all the way like Michael stated. But I first tried filling the back with Robbie O'Brian method of making end grain dust on the sander and dusting the wood with it and using a cotton ball saturated with shellac to rub in the dust filling the pores. I got better and faster results with that method then the pumice. It's in his finishing DVD.

Well if you are following Orville Miburn's tutorial you level sand after you finish bodying. He did not really say when but the tutorial is put together in order of processes.

The next thing I am going to say I do so not to chastise you but rather to possible help you or others to think you way through French polishing rather than blindly following a tutorial. So I want you to know I mean no offence in advance.

Even if you did not know when you could reason it out by thinking about it this way. The three major process are Pore-filling (self explanatory), Boding (the application of shellac to build the film thickness) and Glazing ( polishing the film). the only place that reason tells you this can be done with out causeing problems to other or current processes is after boding when the basic film has been built up and before you start Glazing. As it would be pointless to start glazing if you are just going to scratch it up anyway. So the reasoned answer is after boding is complete.

Now once again I have this uncontrollable need to give my Standard lecture. With practice and perseverance it is relatively simple to build your film level as you go with no need to ever touch the film with any kind of abrasive. The Key to doing so is to learn when to reload the muneca. Avoid over boding in singular areas each session and to follow each body session with a quality Spirit-off that melts down the ridging and swirls of the previous body session. Most of those new to French polish don’t really take the time to understand what each process is doing and or how it affects the on-coming and preceding process. But once you grasp each processes’ propose and how and why you do them, then you will find there is no reason or need to sand level. You just build the film level as you go and never scratch it up

Taken as great insight. I can't wait to look back and laugh at how little I knew....lol