french polish
 

Ok ,What is French polish?

Yes, sorry I am a bluegrasser.

The difference is a violin has strings. A fiddle has strangs.

I'll let myself out......

French polish is a thin soft finish regardless of the application. But I completely understand.

Not sure French polish is too associated with violin finishing but worth a try. If you must fix it, a guitar builder specializing in French polish is the best bet. Folks always say French polish is easy to repair. And it may be if one knows how to French polish. In many places, that means not that easy.

hunter

Photo is not sharp enough to be certain of damage. Find someone who knows how to French polish shellac. Main way to make repairs unnoticeable is to restore a flat surface for light reflection. Process described below removes no wood. Scraping and sanding only removes shellac.

Top mark looks like a dent (compressed wood). Bottom mark looks like there could be some gouging (torn wood fibers) into the tint/stain. If tint is removed than that is a separate fix. Same repair method for dents. Spot remove shellac by alcohol dissolution. Steam to remove dents. Drop fill any remaining depression with platina or super blond shellac. Scrape and sand (400 and 800 wet/dry with olive oil) to level. Polish area with a few coats of same shellac.

Top mark should be 100% unnoticeable. Bottom mark 90% or better.

Photos show repair of 130-year old shellac with drop filling in areas of wood loss. Some smart guy thought wood putty would be a good repair.


https://i.imgur.com/R1QM4Qb.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/0iqtgtr.jpg

It's a finish technique for shellac that uses a pad instead of a brush. You get a high gloss with a very thin finish and no brush marks or uneven spray.

Wood Magazine has a very good video on the technique. Stew Mac also has information. Both show the same thing.

The only difference is Stew Mac did a level sanding. If it is done correctly level sanding is not needed.

You got kids and/or pets?

French polishing is a skill that takes a lot of practice to do well. Suggesting that someone who has never done French polishing before repair their own finish is extremely poor advice: the "fix" will be much worse than the current damage. The place to learn French polishing is not on the face of an expensive instrument.

The "polish", itself, is a mixture of shellac and alcohol - and possible small amounts of various resins. The builder of the guitar, being in Canada, will not send you, in the U.S., some polish. The polish is listed as a flammable/hazardous liquid and is very expensive to ship internationally. There are many possible suppliers in the U.S.

The violin family of instruments are typically finished with a brushed-on varnish, not French polish.

Anyone skilled at French polishing should be able to repair your finish, be they a furniture maker or guitar maker.


There are two aspects to the repair. The first is color, the second is reflection. If a custom color has been used - either using a specific grade/color of shellac, or a specific tint - that will need to matched. It might be possible for a skilled French polisher to "redistribute" the existing finish to "seal" the scratches/gouges, depending upon the depth of the damage. If so, that might be all that is necessary, and would be neither expensive nor lengthy, for a skilled, experienced French polisher. (It'll almost certainly be a mess for a novice.)

The second is how light reflects from the surface of the finish. Imperfections in the surface will be increasingly obvious the higher the gloss of the finish, due to how light is reflected from the surface and its irregularities. For the scratches/gouges to be entirely invisible, their depressions will need to be addressed. This can be by steaming, sanding or filling. Again, the face of an expensive guitar is not the place to learn how to do these things. Whether that is necessary depends upon the extend of the damage, not readily obvious just by looking at the photos.


French polish, when cured, is not a "soft" finish. It is thin and can be delicate. While freak accidents can happen at almost any time, leaving an expensive instrument sitting on a stand 24/7 is to invite damage, particularly in an area where there is foot traffic, pets or children. While there are some good arguments for storing guitars on stands those who do need to understand the risks involved in doing so.

Who is Thomas Rein?

the guitar was hanging, so children and pets cannot get to it.

Obviously, something you didn't account for did.

Some corrections and observations:

1) The scratches have to be fixed first. They need to be lightly sanded out. Steaming doesn’t help scratches, and will cloud the french polish near where you apply steam. So don’t use steam.

2) Once they’re sanded out (which you’d want to do in as small an area that gets the job done, you need to spot reapply shellac. There’s no need to redo the whole top, unless you’re really obsessive. The most wonderful thing about a shellac finish is that it’s easily repaired. Yes, the spot you fix will look a little different from the neighborhood, but you’d probably have to look very closely to see it, if you’ve done a good job on the scratches.

2a) Don’t go after the scratches too aggressively - you don’t want to create a deep indentation in the top. You just want to get them to not look quite so angry.

3) Any alcohol will work with shellac - not just methyl, not just denatured. I use Everclear to dissolve shellac. Not as toxic as the methyl, and just as effective at dissolving shellac.

4) Don’t try to replicate the French Polish - as others have said, this is an arcane art, and if you’ve never done it, this guitar isn’t what to learn on. Just go for a spot repair. You can read about french polishing online, but the gist is to work with a very weak cut of the shellac, make a “rubber” from a soft rag and a cotton ball, and rub on a very thin coat. When that dries (in just a few minutes), repeat. Keep doing that until you’ve got the look you like. You can find this all over YouTube. (I realize my description is sketchy - best to watch this done on YouTube.)

5) “Durability” of the finish. Those scratches came from something hard scratching the top aggressively enough to dig into the wood. No finish would prevent that. Removing the french polish and substituting another finish wouldn’t help - if you dig into wood with metal, the metal wins every time.

Do you know where he is located. Nothing on his website tells me.