french polishing courses/tutorials?

[simonm]

I want to improve my finish work.

So far I have done light french polished shellac finishes but would also consider any brushed on finishes. I started off with the Milburn tutorials. I am up around 25-30, mainly classical, guitars at this stage but my finish is not as professional as it could be.

I have come across a few dvds over the years and there is load on youtube, too much so sorting the wheat from the chaff is next to impossible.

Any recommendations? I am not adverse to spending some money for this. I just watched on of Robbie O'Briens tutorials for a water based finish and that inspired me to ask here.

[johnparchem]

Robbie has a French Polish online course; it is much like the Milburn method but optimised.

The best FP finishes I have seen are not really French Polished. It is the slow application of shellac with a FP like pad (no oil) over some weeks. The surface is leveled every day or couple of days. When there is a good build the guitar sits for a month or 2 and then is level sanded and polished.

[Bruce McC]

Practice and more practice with a technique/method that works for you.
I think Robbie OBrien's DVD French Polish - A Modern Approach, is easy to follow
and I am happy with the results that I get, if you finish with the bridge and neck
off the guitar. French polishing with the bridge glued on and a Spanish heel neck
is a different matter. Robbie's course does address this issue briefly.

[lamanoditrento]

I also recommend Robbie's course, I now used a bit of a blend of Robbie's method and Trevor Gore's azeotropic hard shellac method and am finally happy with my FP

[simso]

Thats a pretty nice finish.

Steve

[asgilbert]

Hi Simon,

Pablo Requena has a YouTube series here is the link to the first of the series, I found it very helpful on about the 3rd run through!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uf4z14Vjkxk&t=287s

Also Richard Howell has a shorter version that has been great to watch.

I find these things a bit like mums cooking though, they give you all the ingredients but the nuances... you got to work for that!!

Andrew

[simonm]

Thanks for all the comments to date. I have also being reviewing the relevant section in "the books"

I looked at some Richard Howell videos a year or two back. It was a quite different approach to anything I had seen up to that point and one thing that stuck in mind about the technique was his very systematic pattern to make sure the whole surface is covered evenly.

There was also a Spanish video that was very different which I saw once but was not able to find it again where the guy applied his shellac by squirting it on from a large squeeze bottle like and industrial sized ketchup bottle and used a car polishing type machine to apply it. Quite unique as well. I believe he was one of the Grenada builders but not one of the most famous ones.

[simonm]

I found a sequence of 9 videos by Pablo Requena, a builder in the UK. They seem to be all in the 20-25 mins range. I looked at the first 3 so far. He is using epoxy as a grain filler for the back and sides and pumicing the neck.

https://www.youtube.com/user/redkitekk/videos