Water stain on French Polished surface

[kiwigeo]

Not exactly guitar related but Im sure at some stage a repair person will come across someone whos put a beer down on top of their guitar.

Ive got a friend with a french polished church pew with a white water mark on it courtesy of her son who thought it would be cool to lie down on the pew with a heat bag under his shoulder.

Ive seen a variety of methods for dealing with such marks including a very coll one where you douse the surface in meths...and then set fire to it.

Rob or anyone else with experience in such things....some sagely advice would be appreciated.

[auscab]

Yes , heat can fix it if its not to deep . A heat gun sometimes fixes it quickly , heat can sort of fry up the shellac though and leave it rough , it gets worse if its a thick body of shellac.

A dry rubber with just metho is the usual way , it doesn't matter if there is a little shellac in there as well , just light straight strokes and if it's not to deep its a great way of making the white mark go .

If it's deep , and sometimes the white, curdled ( What I like to call it ) shellac can go all the way back to the timber , and the first two methods don't work, then Ive usually had to give it a cut back with oil and turps and a 400 grit paper and remove some, or all the curdled shellac and start again .

Rob

[kiwigeo]

Yes , heat can fix it if its not to deep . A heat gun sometimes fixes it quickly , heat can sort of fry up the shellac though and leave it rough , it gets worse if its a thick body of shellac.

A dry rubber with just metho is the usual way , it doesn't matter if there is a little shellac in there as well , just light straight strokes and if it's not to deep its a great way of making the white mark go .

If it's deep , and sometimes the white, curdled ( What I like to call it ) shellac can go all the way back to the timber , and the first two methods don't work, then Ive usually had to give it a cut back with oil and turps and a 400 grit paper and remove some, or all the curdled shellac and start again .

Rob

Advice from the master...brilliant thanks Rob

[auscab]

Advice from the master...brilliant thanks Rob

No worries.
Obviously, you can add a bit of oil if all is going good .

Rob

[kiwigeo]

The stain wasn't too deep so I gave it a bit of a work over with a muneca loaded with meths only.....worked like a charm.

Thanks for the advice Rob.

[auscab]

Good Martin , that's how the old polishers fixed it that I watched. You see that repair a lot with furniture.

Menuca yeah , that's for Spanish polishing yes ? I suppose the Americans did have to come up with another name for it?

I had a French guy with a strong accent come into the shop asking restoration advice, we got to talking and I mentioned French polishing , I asked him had he ever heard of it ? , he shook his head and said no ! He knew nothing about it or what it was called in France.

I do wonder what the french call it , and the pad for applying the shellac, and what that translates to in English ?

Rob

[kiwigeo]

I had a French guy with a strong accent come into the shop asking restoration advice, we got to talking and I mentioned French polishing , I asked him had he ever heard of it ? , he shook his head and said no ! He knew nothing about it or what it was called in France.

I do wonder what the french call it , and the pad for applying the shellac, and what that translates to in English ?

Rob

I believe the term "French Polishing" was coined by the Brits.......it was a foreign method of applying shellac and because it was foreign they called it "french"....even though it's origins weren't French.