I often do French polish. Funny, but there are as many ways to do that as there are finishers. As I explained to another member here a while back, there is a trilogy or synergy to 3 things: shellac, oil and wax. You can combine any 2 or all 3 in numerous compounds. Denatured alcohol is involved as well as mineral spirits (or turpentine), so it can get creative.

Ya know, with all the new tech finishes I always seem to be going back to the old school natural stuff. I use Shellac (made from beetles) a lot, it's extremely durable. It's what hardwood floors were finished with back in the day. I use bees wax with orange oil for certain projects and the only thing I finish my vehicles with is Carnuba (made from palm trees). Mother nature often provides the best materials I guess

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Ok, I think 8's enough. This is 8 coats of Tung oil. You need to wait 24 hours between coats 1 and 3 but for all of the following coats I do 2 per day. (It dries much faster after the initial couple coats) Hard to see in the crappy phone pic but it starts to give depth and look like clear plastic. It's fairly hard now but doesn't fully cure for about a month. Tung oil comes from the Tung tree

I’m going to need to read back up on French polish soon as I’m making a veneered jewelry box for our woodworking guild’s annual show- should have started much earlier, but who doesn’t work a bit better under pressure?

I have 21 sheets of Indonesian Madrone Burl that I will quad match and book match to cover the plywood carcass.

Because the sheets are knife cut and extremely thin, they end up being virtually identical, so by using two mirrors at 90 degrees, you can get an idea of how 4 sheets will form a pattern when cut at that spot and joined together.

Here’s how I have chosen to join these.

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Looks fantastic.

Stumpy Nubs (James Hamilton) did a vid on tung oil and said most were not very good and some not even genuine. You have to had found the good stuff. I'd like to get some.

Made 3 sets of veneer sheets that match: one for the top, one for inside the lid and the other for the bottom- just in case anyone looks underneath!

I sand the sheet edges in pairs to get a straight edge on this sanding shoot board I made that lets me get a straight line while running angled aluminum with stick on sandpaper on it.

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You can find pure Tung oil. Minwax Tung oil is mixed with varnish but i think still produces a beautiful hard finish

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Preview
Rwest, this is a German clock box I restored. I replaced missing inlays and added the back veneers, fenials (and crow). I finished with a rattle can of lacquer. The flat white spray tips on rattle cans these days work really well. I've rattle canned a perfect finish on furniture out of a can. A spray finish is easier to apply on intricate pieces. Lacquer is very stinky for a couple of days though. The jewelry box is a 100 year old prison art piece I stripped and refinished the same way. French polish is a great, tunable finish. It's Shellac thinned down with alcohol. You can make your own with Shellac flakes

Beautiful work Greg!

I’ve done a fair amount of shellac work and have flakes here although they are a few years old and I have heard various things about shelf life of the dry flakes. I’ll probably mix a batch and see if it drys hard.

Just completed a frantic glue up and got the sides of the box into the vacuum bag.

I smartly decided to do the lid and bottom separately to save my sanity.

The pump unit was built by me from plans. It only runs if the vacuum drops, so it isn’t running non-stop and has a buffer tank setup to hold some vacuum in reserve.

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I have an Northfield #4 table saw with a sliding table and today I did the 5 cut test to see if my crosscut fence was square to the blade. Damn, over a 29.5” board, I might have been out.0005 that is 5 ten thousands! Super happy as I wanted to make this box very accurate.

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8 coats looks great!
You can get real tung here https://www.realmilkpaint.com/
I was wondering if yours was one of the mixes.
Wow, fantastic. I can't wait to see once you get the pieces out of the vacuum and put together!

I let the veneered panels sit for over a day to make sure the glue was completely cured and then I sanded them to 220 grit.

The deep red color of the veneer completely sanded away, must have been age or oxidation on the surface. I did a sample with shellac and the color comes somewhat back; maybe a bit more brown than reddish.

I used my old blonde flakes and after 3 nights of eating pasta to empty a jar, I mixed up a small batch to test if the flakes were still good. They were stored in a dark cool place with controlled humidity. I also ordered a fresh batch, why take chances?

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Keep those flakes in a jar instead of a zip lock baggie and they'll be good indefinitely.
I've done glue ups in a vacuum before and the pressure is astronomical (literally since it's atmospheric pressure doing the work). I pin nail my glued up pieces to keep them from slipping out of position and the vacuum bag works better than a plywood press.

I'm surprised about the color change, but also not.

I've seen it in a video (Rob Cosman, I think), and I've seen it myself to some extent. It seems like cutting wood with something very sharp (chisel, hand plane, whatever) produces (at least when raw) the best looking wood. Sanding often seems to dull the color/contrast/appearance of the wood. Now I'm not sure if the dullness is only partially or completely brightened up with a finish is applied. I would assume that applying a oil, wax, or other finish would brighten up a dulled/sanded surface. I don't know if it would ever be as bright as a planed/scraped surface or not.

I think one of the big ww magazines did a test of sanding vs hand planning and found that once a film building finish was applied, they couldn’t tell the difference.

There is definitely a visible difference before the finish is applied though.

Got new shellac flakes and mixed them up. The veneer color comes back once they have finish on them. I made one board a sample board to do finishing and cutting test on.

I put my plywood and veneer blade on the saw and did a cut- even the unsupported side where the blade is forcing the material down came out almost perfectly. In reality, I should be able to make most of the cuts in supported mode.

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Cut all the sides down to size. 5” tall, long sides are 13” and the ends are 7”, but they will be between the front and back, so the side will be 8” long total.

I only veneer the insides when I build a veneered box because when I cut the top free, I don’t want to lose the outside grain match to the saw kerf- inside isn’t noticeable and would be very difficult to glue in after the fact.

I will be assembling the sides with 4mm Dominoes.

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Time to cut out for the bottom and top. Veneer is so easy to get chip out in, especially burls. I have found using a marking gauge to slice it before cutting or routing stops chip out.

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Finally, cut the slots, sized the bottom and glued it together. Did it on a granite surface plate, why not stack the odds for a straight, square and true box?

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