Before I started to french polish the guitar, I bought Robbie Obrien´s online course in french polishing. I definitely recommend this, if you haven´t tried it before like me. The course goes through all the steps in finishing a guitar.
Mixing up the Shellac. I chose to got with blonde shellac instead of super blonde, since i wanted to add a bit of yellow to the spruce top to age it abit. You can´t get grain alcohol i denmark without a permit, so I went with bioethanol after doing some research.
I love to do tests. Here i tested how the spruce would look with about 3 rounds of blonde shellac and a few rounds of orange shellac. Thats the raw spruce on the right. I really like the look of the mixed shellac. Looks nice and aged.
A test on the rosewood. Nice and glossy!
Big sanding day! Alot of sandpaper and dust... peew.
Grain filling the rosewood. I used the Colortone Grainfiller from Stewmac. I gave it 2 times, but it didn´t seem to fill the grain completely so bought some pumice to take care of the rest and it worked. I gave it a few washcoats of shellac before. Its my fat cat in the back... he likes to hang around the workshop sometimes.
Using pumice to fill the grain after the grainfiller. Very good result! But it takes a lot longer.
The back finished. Looking good!! I think the cat approved it :)
Sides done.
Soundboard done.
The full guitar done. Yipiii!
Bridge clamping caul. Since I don´t have any clamps that could reach the bridge area through the soundhole, I saw this solution online. Simple and effective.
The strings are on and the guitar is ready to make music.
