Thank you for this tutorial! You gave me the courage to try to protect three gorgeous machines before time can take a further toll on them.
The first one is looking pretty good. After getting it as clean as I dared, I had to apply spray shellac rather heavily just to get some protection over the decals. In this heat, the spray resulted in a pebbled surface, which had to be sanded and melted down with alcohol, and I guess I've applied eight or ten coats of French polishing over that.
I've been letting it rest for two or three days, polishing twice and letting it sit, again. The surface is either greasy feeling (after cool days) or sticky (after hot days) - if it's sticky and I try to polish, the rag just peels up the previous coat.
Is the linseed oil supposed to harden as when oil painting? Or am I supposed to be wiping it away with naphtha whenever I'm ready to give it a couple more coats of polishing?
Should I be waiting longer between polishing? Or should I be piling on the polishing coats several times a day until it's super shiny and then let it sit for a week or so?
The other day, I propped up the dry side of the arm on top of a giant Tums bottle, so that I could see the underarm area better, and when I righted it, the plastic bottle had left deep impressions in the black japanning. I slowly massaged those areas smooth with an oiled finger, but the japanning shouldn't be that soft after sitting for two or three days, should it?
I'm using Zinsser clear bullseye premixed shellac, fresh and newly opened, with only a tiny bit of boiled linseed oil. The polishing looks glossy and beautiful when is first done, but dulls gradually over a couple of days.
What do you think might be going wrong?
This is how it looks, a few hours after two polishing coats
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http://www.quiltingboard.com/members...34-522286.html
I have an album in my profile with the progress on this - the other pictures are much smaller than this.
Thanks again!
Elizabeth