Finish Identity Crisis

[TommyK]

How do you determine the pedigree of an instrument's finish? How do you tell the difference between lacquer, shelac, nitrocellulose, rustroleum, french polish, etc?
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[sunburst]

On newer instruments the easiest way is to contact the manufacturer.

If that's not an option, you can test with solvents that are specific to certain finish types and that will narrow it down.
These days there are so many possibilities that a definite answere might be pretty hard to come up with, but older instruments will have fewer options.