I'm wondering if steaming might help a bit. If you get clouding can't that be repolished?

Tom is now located in Michigan

Find a luthier who works on violins, violas, etc. They usually know the ins and outs of repairing french polish.

That's the plan though one post said most are of varnish not FP. Regretting getting FP--everyone said it's easy to repair but nobody told me how hard it is to find anyone who does it.

Do you have a dog? You should have seen what mine did to the top of a J-40!

Yes I do but the guitar hangs on the wall.

French polishing itself isn't the issue here, it's the depth of the scratches. Light surface marks can be readily polished out, but those look to be a lot deeper than a few microns of polish.
Anyway the mystery of whodunnit intrigues me! I hope you get it sorted.

It kind of is the issue because any repair work (steaming or sanding, etc) will have to be followed by repolishing the area.

It is a mystery, since it happened in a 24 hour period with everybody else away for the weekend. And unless I blacked out, that kind of damage you would you would know when it happened.

Yes of course, although that is true of any finish. What I was trying to say is that French polishing by itself won't take care of the scratches.

Maybe Gruhm Or Carter Vintage repair staff could look at it. I’ve seen some pretty dramatic repairs on FP. Richard Brune in Illinois did an amazing job on Agostin Barrios’ Santos Hernandez guitar some years ago and it’s absolutely undetectable.

Find a French polisher...
 

As previously said, it doesn’t have to be a guitar maker/repairer - in fact other than with classical instruments, shellac is an uncommon finish for guitars

To the best of my knowledge violin makers never use French polishing as a technique, or shellac as a finish. Instruments from this family are usually finished with spirit varnish over all manner of treatments to colour the wood.

A furniture restorer, skilled in French polish repairs is almost certainly your best bet.

I would rather find a guitar make who know FP if i can. Just not sure if a furniture restorer would know how to handle a delicate instrument.

Steam is good for dents - it causes the fibers to take up moisture and swell, popping the dent out. But a scratch is where the wood has been torn and potentially removed, so steam isn’t going to help that.

But yes, if you cloud a shellac finish, you can polish it out with some more shellac. I was just trying to limit the area that needed to be touched. I don’t think someone who’s never done a french polish before is going to get it looking like an expert would, so replenishing the shellac on just a little area is probably going to look better.

I dont know where you are but this guy is a FP expert that builds and repairs guitars.
John McKenna
895 Church St.
Christiansburg VA 24073

540-577-1777