Thinking of using French Polish? Well,

[hilo_kawika]

here are some useful articles for your consideration from one of the best:

http://www.guitarramagazine.com/OribeGuitars1

http://www.oribeguitars.com/Answers.html

and emphasizing from the first article on care and attention of the finish

http://www.guitarsalon.com/forums/showt ... p?p=112220

Note in particular "Because of the thermoplastic properties of French polish, avoid any proximity to warmth. A soft insulating cloth should be used at the point of contact with the body, especially during warm weather. Particularly avoid perspiration."

Lovely to look at, but...

aloha,

Dave Hurd
www.ukuleles.com

[Allen]

All good reasons to avoid FP in the tropics unless you love caring for your guitar more than you'd like to admit. Thanks for the links David. They are a good read.

[Kim]

Thanks David,

For me the reality in the short comings of French Polish as a finishing system have always diminished the combined allure of romance, mystic and tradition this method represents. Maybe this is why we began looking for something better suited to the craft so very long ago.

Cheers

Kim

[James Mc]

Thinking about it, will I use french polish? Hmmm… yep sure will.

For me, as someone with no aspirations of selling what I build, the benefits of shellac far outweigh the problems. Why? Well it’s cheap, non toxic and easy to apply with no special equipment, but mostly because my old French polished classical spent three years bashing around Borneo, East Africa and the PNG rainforest with me (not many places hotter or more humid than these). It picked up some wear alone the way but didn’t look much worse when we got back than the Martin my mate was dragging around with us (and his would get locked away it its case while mine was being passed around for the kids to play with). When we got back I took off the tuners gave it a good clean and rubbed on a few new coats of shellac. I had it looking almost as good as new in just a couple of hours at the cost a couple of bucks and clean up was to drop a couple of muneca in the bin then wash my hands.

I have to wonder if the guys who wrote about the fragility of french polish ever used a bit of sandarac (gum rosin) in their mix. It’s harder than shellac and doesn’t soften until over 100 degrees c, so it adds both hardness and heat resistance to a shellac based finish. I use 10% gum when I mix shellac, both the ancient guy that got me started building guitars and the really old guy I worked with doing antique furniture restorations considered this to be the standard mix for french polishing.