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"
