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Got a finishing question, if you please. I’m now ready to try finishing my first two guitars (classical). I’ve pretty much tried to stay traditional on these first two, and have seal coated one with shellac and am getting ready to pore fill with pumice. My initial plan was to French polish both guitars, but since I was introduced to PolyWhey on this forum a few weeks back (I’ve got a quart of the satin), I thought I would try it on the back and sides of one of the guitars, and just French polish the top. Question – do you think I can go with the PolyWhey after the grain filling, or should I put a coat of shellac on after the pore fill? Maybe this is a simple question, but it’s all new to me, and I don’t want to screw up now. I’ll be brushing on the PolyWhey, want to stay inside the house, I’m in Florida and the humidity really fluctuates from day to day, although the temperature is still getting into the 70’s. Thanks for any advice you can offer.

What are you using to pore fill?

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Formerly known as Adaboy.......

If I understand what Mike is saying over on the other thread, he intends to apply the polywhey right over the shellac and apply enough coats so that the polywhey fills the pores. If polywhey can fill pores in a reasonable number of coats, this sounds like a wonderful option. The board I tested, I had already filled the pores. Today I started testing a piece of claro walnut to which I only applied some shellac. It will be a couple of weeks by the time I've let it cure and sand/buff it out. If it turns out that a separate pore fill is not needed with polywhey, hallelujah!

Pat

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There are three kinds of people:

Those that make things happen,
those that watch things happen,
and those that wondered what happened.

Darryl, I was planning on using pumice. I'm following the instructions on the milburnguitars site as my guide to French polishing.

Pat, I will go back and re-read the thread on the PolyWhey - didn't realize that it might work for pore filling (newbie). Try to find thread earlier today and couldn't locate it, but I see that it's back on the front page.

Thanks, Darryl and Pat for the responses.