Thanks for the comments, I'll keep the curved glass back panel in mind for... sometime in the future.
For the drawer fronts I've veneered the Madrona burr onto quartered oak and balanced it with some quartered oak veneer.
I had a bit of an idea of how I wanted the finish be on the burr panels... I wanted them to be a particular type of shiny which is a bit of a departure for me, most of my work been either sprayed semi gloss or hand rubbed matt/satin.
The type of shiny I imagined was that shine you see on well cared for antique furniture that has been lovingly waxed for generations. On a lot of these old pieces, especially the oak pieces, the only finish ever used was wax with maybe a little oil here and there but mainly just bee's wax melted in turpentine with lots of rubbing over maybe two or three hundred years.
Well I don't have centuries so plan B is French polish. It's been many years since I dabbled in the secretions of the lac beetle and to say I'm rusty is an understatement but there are so many French polishing videos on Youtube now I thought I'd give it a go.
I've really enjoyed the process, from getting the rubber right (I'm running 4 rubbers at present, some better than others) through the grain filling stage with pumice powder to bodying up and then the spiriting off.
For the uninitiated French polishers ( like me
) It's a slow process and time consuming. You use a wrapped pad (the rubber) to leave a whisper of polish on the wood surface at each pass, slowly building up a high gloss nano film. The rubber is rubbed in a circular motion, a figure of eight and in straight lines up and down the piece leaving as even a coat as possible and then towards the end of the process the surface is rubbed hard with the rubber charged mainly with meths to 'melt' the finish into a smooth high gloss film. It doesn't half make yer arm ache.
Proper French polishing, the type you see on Bechsteins and Bosendorfers, is an incredibly high gloss finish applied over hundreds of hours by very skilled craftsmen/women and is unlike any sprayed finish. It's definitely in the ten thousand hour skill department.
It's a fast drying finish and fairly hardwearing but as the solvent is alcohol it is adversely affected by gin and tonics and generally not used for bar tops.
The shellac varnish has quite a short a shelf life (months, maybe weeks) and when it gets old it doesn't set hard. Commercially available French polish/button polish/sand sealer etc doesn't have a best before date on the tin so in general, french polishers mix fresh polish as and when they need by dissolving pure shellac flakes or buttons of shellac in denatured alcohol, (often meths). The thickness (viscosity) of the mixed polish is described as a pound cut, that is the number of pounds of shellac mixed in a gallon of alcohol. A two pound cut is a commonly used to French polish furniture.
Mixing fresh shellac like this is an art in itself, the raw shellac comes in many different forms from Garnet Buttons to Super Blonde Dewaxed flakes and then there's a discussion to be had about which alcohol is best to use....
Fortunately, for those who don't always want to immerse themselves in the dark arts, Zinsser make a product call Seal Coat which is basically a 2 pound cut shellac polish with a 3 year shelf life. It's perfect for for french polishing and is used by more professional polishers than would care to admit it.
The finish I was getting isn't at all like a spray finish, it's not uniform but has a flow to it a bit like the surface of a slow moving stream. I liked it but it was getting very glossy... think guitar finish, which I didn't really want so the next step was to try knocking it back and waxing to try and get near the old antique wax finish I have in my mind. I should say my term, knocking back just refers to taking the shine off with steel wool or the like. It's important that the finish is very cured before using steel wool or the surface will scar. 0000 grade is suitable but actually I like using the 3M pads as an alternative.
Here's some before and after photos. The first one is starting out and the second is the stage where I'm wondering whether this is the finish I actually want,
