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French polish (shellac + alchohol) on something you take outside? What about water and perspiration?

FN used a combination of shellac and oil varnish (perhaps something like the old spar varnish)"hand applied"--which I suppose means rubbed on and rubbed down on the early Browing Supers. I don't think you'd want to set your coffee cup on a true French polish and when it cracked, you'd see worse problems of "permeability" than you're ever going to see with boiled linseed with or without driers.

jack

French Polish is traditional finish for the Best English guns and the rest the best. There are several primers used for French Polish, but I prefer hamburger I described in prevous post.
French Polish affraid of exposure of strong alchogol only, that's why don't drink at hunt!
The rest is gossip from people who never used real French Polish.
I use French Polish by UK company Rustin's. Very easy to use.

Geno, thanks for the clarification.

Also, is your "French Polish" the classic one that uses the rubber with shellac and a few drops of raw linseed oil? There is a very detailed description of this method in James V. Howe's book "The modern Gunsmith" (ISBN: 0-517-38583X).

John M. should pop into this topic with all his wisdom. :-)

JC(AL)

P.S.: Geno, as chance would have it, I had started the stock I am experimenting with with linseed oil before I received the Watco Danish Oil from the US. As you point out, it did bring out the contrasting grain very well. JC

John M posted in another thread this AM that he is snowed under with work right now. I had at hand a copy of his post from a year ago on French polishing so here it is:

"Shellac flakes are still available in a variety of grades. They range from raw seedlac right on the twigs, replete with lac bug casings and dirt to highly refined and bleach super blond extra. I believe that when the shellac trade was at it's highest commecial level, there were somwhere around fourteen different standard varieties.

If anyone has a hankering for a whacking big lot of shellac, one can still purchase a 100 pound shipping sack of the variety wanted right from the Zinnser company in New Jersey. It's kept in refrigerated warehouses, as heat degrades the solubility of the flakes quickly.

If one wants to try smaller gunstock sized varieties, Kremer Pigmente and many Woodworking Catalogs carry some of it, usually in the more popular grades.

French polishing [or English polishing as the French call it ;~`)] dates back to the late 18th century [or earlier] when shellac became widely available in European trade. It really hit it's stride in the 1820's, when furniture and other decorative arts began to feature wide and flat surfaces.

The French name is actually 'vernis de tampon' or varnish from a pad. Remeber that 'varnish' at that time include both 'spirit varnish' -- alcohol based and the resin-oil 'run' or cooked varnish that we think of today.

In the older victorian era finishers manuals and painters handbooks, a typical polish would have denatured alcohol and shellac flake. The local 'chemist' [pharmacy] commonly would whip up a quart or two, if you didn't have the necessary ingredients to hand.

There were also prepared trade polishes ready to go, perhaps containing a couple of 'secret ingredients', which promised a faster build on the surface. Gum and rosins were common additions.

Altho air-bubble clarified linseed oil -- the so called boiled linseed -- was available, raw linseed with the very slow curing impurities was cheap and handy. So...following one set of directions from the mid-late ninteenth century:

"Flood the surface with raw linseed oil, and wipe off excess. Charge the rubber or ball [a big table top might require a fist sized covered ball] with the two pound cut shellac."

Pass over the surface in ... and here there would be a series of pictures showing the various figures eights, circles, paralllel passes, loops, and elipses you would make as the ball glided over the wood.

Keep the ball well-charged, but not so wet as to dissolve that shellac already laid on. As the rubber gets dryer press the harder upon it, so as to push the flexible coating down into the pores." and so on in pargraphs of great prose.

At some point, probably on the second or third day, if one proceeded from raw timber, you would have roughed in the pores and have a good thin uniform layer of stiffish shellac. At that time, you'd be using more alcohol in the ball, until you switched to a pure alcohol 'float ball' for the final passes.

Practice varied with the dab of oil on the rubber. If you did the oil flood, you spent a great deal of time using that up in the polishing layers. It would continue to float up to the surface and little extra oil was needed.

If you skipped the oil flood which is modern practice, then the oil dab is there from the start. Mixing it with the polish directly doesn't work out well on larger objects as the polish has a trouble getting to the harder stages: too much oil.

in any event, in the older methods, there is a good deal of attention paid to a final 'polish' that could be anything from a dilute acid wash to a rubbing with chamois, oil, and rottenstone, to 'float off' with alcohol; in an effort to give that glass hard flawless look of a true polish. I believe the excess oil contributed to this, but it also allowed a fast build and for the shellac 'jello' to be pushed around the surface.

Mostly, it's practice, but some coaching really helps. There were many many methods of achieving this look, and Geno has a good quick one. I use padded shellac on a daily basis, and so i tell that there is always another thing to learn or remember.

Also, good moderm comprehensive finshing books will be of great service in understanding the process. The usual old book would describe this several pages to a chapter. However, the modern finish chemist has better explation about the results ;~`)

Feel free to E me or PM or call, with arrangements. Somedays when i am in the middle of a job, and it is not going right, all i can do is persist and keep trying -- but not fighting the material - untill suddenly all starts to flow as silk and the finsh lays out clear and smooth. So, it's a bit of an art, too, i suppose. John Meeker"

Thanks Fred.

JC(AL)

JC, that's right, Rustin's is classic shellac + alchogol + some secret ingredients. Few drops of linseed oil and go ahead!
The final finish (layer) I make in a little bit different manner using Liquid Wax from the same Rustin's and polishing. But last time I have found Stock Sheen and Conditioner from Birchwood Casey works best! The surface got very noble lustre finish and you never guess shellac been used.
Many people say: I don't like shellac, the varnish looks too thick to me.
That's right, because shallac been used in not right way. The layer has to be thin and all pores have to be filled up before shellac application.
JC, if you want to try French Polish (shellac) plz don't forget all ingredints you used before FP application (linseed oil, Danish oil) have to be very dry.

I am a recent convert to Tung Oil. Gloss variety. I prefer it to Boiled Linseed Oil and combos of Boiled Linseed Oil and other ingredients. I like it better thna Tru Oil too. Tru Oil just seems to lack something that Tung provides, I guess a slight amber color plus I like the way Tung Oil goes on thinner and conveys a look that resembles more the fine old gun look... All in my most humble (and ever getting humbler) opinion, of course.

Geno, thanks for the advice. I'll keep it in mind. I do have the advantage that Santiago has a very dry weather (lousy for keeping cigars) so the ingredients on the stocks dry rather quickly.

JC(AL)

Geno, isn't Birchwood-Casey Stock Sheen silicone-based? If this recollection is correct, I think there's an issue: I've heard that silicone residues make it damn near impossible to apply additional finish coats, nearly forever.

Years ago I used silicone-based grease on chem lab glass fittings. The only thing that I recall would dissolve the stuff was concentrated KOH.