Half-baked French polish

Remember the dripping shellac thing of the last article? Man, I thought I really ruined the job and that I'd end up with some backyardish junk.

Well, there's apparently always a way to fix up a mess.

I went back to the basics of applying shellac: French polish. And I also went back to my favorite store downtown Brussels, carrying all kinds of peculiar artist supply to buy cotton wick. Extremely cheap stuff.

Why call it half baked? For a couple of reasons. First of all, the traditional purpose of French polish is high gloss finish. And that's not my intent here, I want to achieve good sealing and surface preparation for poly.

Secondly, my process doesn't involve any oil - like it's supposed to - for obvious reasons.

Since shellac when applied with a pad is pretty forgiving, it makes messing around possible. If something goes wrong, it's just a matter of loading up your pad and blending the blunder down.

First of all, after inspecting, some more drips to get rid of.

1. Making a shellac pad

Take a piece of 10"x10" (25cm x 25cm) white used cloth (an old t-shirt or some used bed linen) and fill it with a ball of cotton wick. Done. Cost: 5 cents.

2. Thinning shellac down

A 2 pound cut is too heavy for pad application. It must be thinned down to 1 1/2 pound cut. Just add denatured alcohol.

3. Rubbing with the pad.

Load up the cotton wick with shellac, not too much. Work along the grain, with narrow 8 movements, from batter side to reso side. When pad sticks and stops slipping, reload with a little shellac (3 ml - I use a syringe). The rule: damp, not wet.

4. Stop after 2 coats and let it cure. 

I let it sit overnight since I'm doing this job late.

This is basically the idea behind working with shellac, you'll find tons of detailed videos and articles on the internet.

5. The result.

Here are some pictures of the sealed wood, after many coats - didn't count - more than 20.

Well, I like the sheen and the very thin layer of gloss, looking "natural". This really makes me wanna try a proper French polish on some other project, with pumice grain filling and oil.

On the other hand, if you take a closer look, the wood grain is still there. So that's the reason why I will keep going with the process I had in mind and apply a dozen coats of waterborne poly.

Dear followers, say goodbye to the beautiful sheen since it's gonna be sanded away with 400 grit with water.