Finish rescue

[whistler]

I recently borrowed one of my own instruments (a guitar-bodied 'bouzouki'), which is French-polished, from a customer, to use it on a recording. Foolishly, I did not treat it with due care and managed to knock it on a corner of a piece of furniture, chipping a little shellac off the binding.

Can anyone give any particular tips on repairing damage of this kind?

[Michael Lewis]

Is there much color in the shellac? This can be a tricky process. Color matching is an art and takes lots of practice or great luck. Do you have more of the original finish? If so, use it, but if not you will have to do your best to camoflage the area. If you get it close it may not be noticable. Too many times I have gone too far trying to get the repair Perfect.

[Rick Turner]

Michael speaks volumes of truth there. Sometimes the more you do, the worse it gets. At least shellac is very repairable; it just takes time.

[whistler]

The finish is traditional 'French polish' with no added colour - i.e. a pale yellow colour. However, a couple of people remarked, when the instrument was just finished, that it looked a deeper colour than typical, and wondered whether I had mixed in some 'button polish' by accident (which I'm quite sure I didn't) - so, maybe there was something a little odd about the polish I used.

Fortunately, the chipped area is so small (~1.5mm wide X 8mm long, along the corner of the top binding), that a slight colour discrepancy would hardly be noticeable. But, how easy is it to achieve a smooth graduation between the colours?

Incidentally, the owner knows about the damage and will see it before it gets repaired. I think my description made it out to be somewhat worse than it is, so, I hope, he will be relieved by how small the extent of it is.

[Michael Lewis]

You know, it is human nature to focus on some small thing and in our minds we turn it into the Grand Canyon. Hope you like a challenge.

[amowry]

I often just French polish over things like that and they fill in surprisingly fast. I would think that with blonde shellac the color wouldn't be too much of an issue. it seems that with French polishing the shellac will often fill in the depression without building too thick in the surrounding areas, but you could also level it with a bit of sandpaper if it does build up too much.

[Rick Turner]

You can also drop fill with shellac and then FP over it. That's my standard finish restoration procedure. It can take months, though...