fernandraynaud
Oud Junkie
Posts: 1865
Registered: 7-25-2009
Location: San Francisco, California
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Mood: m'Oudy
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Finishing the face with Egg White
The short version: Apply egg white evenly with piece of folded gauze. Dry gently with hair dryer. Sand with 600 paper. Apply 3 more coats this way.
Buff to desired satin or gloss.
After reading many times of this, and not being 100% thrilled with my first venture into French Polishing, i decided to try egg white. The fact that
some oud players are happy to watch the face build up a "patina" of crud surprises me. There has to be a better way.
I understand that a crude varnish job is not an attractive option. Many a cheap oud's soundboard has been graced with varnish, and if the grain fights
the brushstrokes, its an ugly combat indeed. Interestingly, an hour with some 000 steel wool can turn one of those Mohamed Ali Street eyesores into a
satin beauty. You'd think it was a boutique oud. Put some viola pegs on, tack a Michael Mouse or Maurice Sheraton label inside, and voila! But why
even start on this path?
Sonically, most finishes are murder on a spruce or cedar soundboard. The sure way to turn a sparkling soundboard into a slice of salami is to oil it.
The only hope then is that, having "nourished" the wood, this will entice some rodent to eat it.
The soundboard, if it is to be coated at all, will take well only to "crunchy" finishes, like Shellac or other alcohol-based varnishes, that evaporate
to leave the wood fibers unbound, free to vibrate.
French Polish is a technique, not a substance. It takes practice. It's best performed on a sealed wood. One of my many mistakes was to omit that step.
The successive application of micro-layers of Shellac flakes dissolved in alcohol, with intervening fine sandings, is complicated by the tendency of
each layer to redissolve the previous ones. The result in my case was good enough to be praised by close family members who are stuck with me anyway.
Anyway, egg white sounded good. I was especially drawn to Dr Oud's description as "almost invisible". You can't botch the invisible. You would be
surprised. See photo 1, entitled "idiot at work". This is how not to do it, in the mistaken belief that it will all ... evaporate? Well, of course it
doesn't.
If your oud face looks like baby's head in the tub, you are foaming it too much. A brush is not the ideal tool. What happens next is that all those
soft streaks dry into hard streaks. The surprising thing is how resilient the stuff is. Oh, sure, you can remove it. Hope you didn't forget to put
masking tape around the periphery.
The better approach is to use a piece of gauze. Crack the egg, and feed the yolk to whatever animal parasite you share your life with. I used to have
a raccoon that was raised from a bottle-fed baby and turned into a 50 pound monster with the IQ of a wily retard and definite opinions. Raccoons have
very agile hands. His favorite pastimes included pulling EVERYTHING from cupboards, opening containers, pulling all the toilet paper off a roll, and
flushing valuable objects down the toilet. The house still has little hook-and-eye fasteners on the cabinets. Raccoons love eggs, that's the
connection, he used to steal them and spread the mess around. Anyway, if you put the intact egg white in a little china bowl, you can slather it
calmly on your oud with a folded piece of gauze.
The first coat is sucked up by the wood. As you blow dry it, remember you are not making an omelet, or trying to unglue the braces. Keep the hair
dryer far enough away to simulate warm desert air and not cook the oud. If you want to let it dry overnight, be my guest. When it turns crunchy you
sand it with that 600 wet/dry type black stuff. Then slather on another coat. Be careful that the pick-guard or bridge doesn't bleed color into the
light colored wood. Dry it. It's getting shinier. Sand it. Another coat. Dry it. Maybe another.
Now comes the part where you have "options". You can finish it more or less glossy. Or, as in my case, a bit of both. The easiest result to achieve is
camouflage glossy: islands of shine with isthmuses of matte. This is where you wonder if you shouldn't have kept the yolk in with it and made an
abstract oud. This is also when you ask yourself why you started on the whole stupid project in the first place. Do not despair. You can always drive
down to Home Depot and buy a cheap sander, and thin your soundboard. You can then return the sander by saying the cat's fur kept clogging the
mechanism (but you cleaned it), and get your money back.
Or you can show a little manly patience, sand it lightly one last time with the black stuff, then apply a lot of so-called "elbow-grease" with
something like a "plastic steel wool". It's not all that slow. I've been able to do one oud an evening. Here is where you come to appreciate what the
chicken wrought. The albumen has saturated the wood and turned it crunchier. A tiny step towards the famous petrified forest. It's actually a decent
sealer, and not as absent as one might think. You can polish it to a lovely satin. If you are very very patient, who knows? maybe even a lovely gloss.
If you are lazy, just sand it evenly to an "almost invisible" matte, forget it and move on with your life. Photo 3 shows the satin look. I think it's
cool. Now I won't have to worry so much about drooling while I play.
It's not as effective as Scotch Guard, but it's easier to keep clean than virgin spruce. A drop of water turns the finish matte, but a little rubbing
with the plastic steel wool brings back the shine. I had intended this as a first step, to be followed later by French Polishing, but I will leave it
this way for a while, knowing full well that "for a while" can easily turn permanent. Still, I know this is not sufficient protection against stains.
I'm hoping it will make French Polishing easier. Fortunately it looks nice for now ...
p.s. if anyone wondered about maybe using Scotch Guard ... I did. It turns out it's basically paraffin ... another road to a gummy salami soundboard.
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Kelly
Oud Junkie
Posts: 285
Registered: 1-30-2007
Location: Manchester, UK
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Hi Ferandraynaud
Pic 3 looks a great. I was wondering about egg white or tempura finish. some lute makers are known to use it. I tried a trial coat on a scrap but
seemed to leave a whitish coat on top. may be I should have sanded off and applied 2nd/3rd as you describe. what about using a little turpentine
also.
I've just recently completed a new spruce top on an old bowl so I'm not sure if to seal it or not.
Kelly
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fernandraynaud
Oud Junkie
Posts: 1865
Registered: 7-25-2009
Location: San Francisco, California
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Mood: m'Oudy
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No idea about turpentine. No question in my mind that some type of sealing is desirable, and light sealing is better than none. With egg white it's
easy to make it quite invisible if you want: just sand it, so I wouldn't hesitate. I only wish it were a little stronger at protecting the wood. I
think I'm sentenced to more French Polishing sessions.
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Kelly
Oud Junkie
Posts: 285
Registered: 1-30-2007
Location: Manchester, UK
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I'll try with a couple more test pieces with or without turpentine over the next week and let you know if any difference.
Thanks for the info and I'll get cracking a few and make the cats happy or bake a cake!
Kelly
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fernandraynaud
Oud Junkie
Posts: 1865
Registered: 7-25-2009
Location: San Francisco, California
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Mood: m'Oudy
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I had a dismal adventure with turpentine. I know what turpentine smelled like, it smelled rather nice, mostly like pine resins, I loved that smell, I
used to hang out in artists' studios when i was a kid. And this isn't it! The Sunnyside turpentine I got smells like an evil completely volatile
petrochemical marinade of old formica countertops and bicycle parts. No wonder they warn about breathing it, that it "may affect the brain or nervous
system". The "nervous system" is apparently what is left after your "brain" is gone.
The Turpentine I knew doesn't flash evaporate, it contains oils and rosin. On a piece of scrap wood, THIS crap evaporates very quickly, leaving
nothing. I bet it's made in China and would dissolve a chicken in about half an hour. I called their support number, but they are closed. Has
turpentine changed so much? What the heck is this stuff?
The next day, Sunnyside support called to inform me that the turpentine available nowadays comes from Asia and is not the quality that they, or I,
would like. Still, it formally meets the definition of turpentine, and is, "regretfully", all that is available in quantity. They suggest that an art
supply store may have a premium turpentine that is like what i remember, in small containers, and at higher cost. In a few years we'll maybe get a
similar story when we open a bottle of orange juice that tastes like paint stripper.
OK, 75 ml (!) of Grumbacher turpentine I found cost $9. But it smells like what I know and love.
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fernandraynaud
Oud Junkie
Posts: 1865
Registered: 7-25-2009
Location: San Francisco, California
Member Is Offline
Mood: m'Oudy
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The Egg White coating
My summary of several days messing with egg white is that
- it looks nice
- it's easier than French Polishing
- it's "organic", whatever that means
- it's probably harmless but mostly a complete waste of time
The problem is that the albumen proteins, be they more or less denatured, are largely hydrophillic, water-attracted. No polymerization has taken place
(as in a varnish) to create a barrier to water. In the end a water-borne stain will penetrate the top layer and wick into the wood. That becomes
obvious as you work hard at polishing, and you see a drop of perspiration seep into the wood. An oil-borne stain can also find shelter in the coating,
and probably reach the wood as well. Accidentally dump some spaghetti a la Bolognese on your oud, and your soundboard will likely forever be as good
as a color photocopy of your pasta course. The main purpose of a coating is thus defeated right there.
As to the idea of manipulation (or separation or adding what passes for turpentine to it) making the albumen turn truly water-repellent, we'll see
what the brothers come up with, but I don't hold too much hope. As an undercoating for shellac, it might have value. It will keep some smudges from
penetrating. But as a protective coating? not really. If you leave a thick enough layer, it can be buffed glossy. If you sand it down and buff, you
can achieve a nice satin. But why bother? I personally think that the reason some guitar-makers use it is because of the "organic" cachet. Add
the notion that it perhaps might cause cracking, and it's largely thumbs down.
Belgian Polishing
But in the process of sanding and buffing the soundboards of 3 ouds, including the Model 1 I had started French Polishing, I stumbled on a technique I
will call "Belgian Polishing". As to the name, it's based on the stream of jokes about the alleged ineptness of the Belgians. But Belgium consists of
two nations that manage to coexist, unlike their "smarter" neighbors who can't figure that one out. So who's the dummy? Same with Belgian Polish. It's
simple, but it works.
What's wrong with French Polishing? Nothing. It's just terribly labor-intensive. It's not uncommon for a hundred coats or more to be applied, or for
the patient, I mean luthier, to lose his mind. The gloss is derived from suffering. Or you have to have "the touch". I've watched experts do it ...
oops. It's always a bit of hit-or-miss. And I, for one, can't quite get the hang of it.
Belgian Polish works like this. You first do the best possible job of French Polishing, which generally is like mine, namely not so great. Fine from a
distance, but at an angle to the light, the grain will be more raised here and there, and oases of glossy perfection will stand out amidst alleys of
streaking. A good start, or a disaster, depending how you look at it. To save time you can probably just as well apply shellac in alcohol with a
brush, and let it penetrate a bit
But then, rather than sink into despair or keep trying with the little pad, and spending the rest of your remaining health trying to figure out all
the myriad things that DO go wrong, you level the (dry) shellac with 600 sandpaper, then a fine 000 (Dark Grey) plastic steel wool, then 0000 (white)
plastic steel wool until it turns satin-gloss. And you are done. It looks different from French Polish. It's a more satin finish, and it looks a whole
lot better than the previous state of affairs, namely a half-butt French Polish. Sonically it seems transparent like French Polish. Unlike egg white
it protects the soundboard, and (unlike pure French Polishing) it saves you from insanity. You can dump a whole plate of spaghetti on it, and it will
come right off. Voila, Belgian Polish.
French or Belgian? you choose.
I suspect many of the lovely boutique ouds that sport a satiny "French Polish", like some $3000 Turkish ouds I was just looking at, are done exactly
this way, and not by using only the obligatory pad.
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fernandraynaud
Oud Junkie
Posts: 1865
Registered: 7-25-2009
Location: San Francisco, California
Member Is Offline
Mood: m'Oudy
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While jdowning experiments with distillates, I am happy to report, lest inexplicable silence suggest untimely disaster, that the two ouds that had
wholesome, natural, egg white applied to the soundboards are healthy and merrily developing, or "opening up", as we say. The top layer, which forms a
sort of frosting, and can be buffed to a gloss, is fragile. Nothing suggests it has changed anything acoustically. On the positive side, it can be
treated as a disposable coating, easy to remove with steel wool or sandpaper, and superficial marks and "patina" removed with it. I'm not willing to
try drops of wine, they might penetrate the wood, or they might stay in the top layer. The wood, in wicking the liquid from the egg white, might or
might not have acquired some of the water-resistance imparted by an egg white "distillate", as prepared by the clean-handed alchemist next door. I am
not eager to test such questions on real soundboards. It should be clear that, whatever some guitar makers may choose to do, no matter how enchanting
the subtle look, I consider applying egg white to a soundboard not worth the trouble, except as a "bonding with your oud" experience.
Shellac is an entirely different matter. It's unquestionably, demonstrably and seriously resistant to water and oil-borne stains, dirty hands, and
romps in the pigsty, even if it yields to strong spirits. It's just a matter of time until I sand this prissy egg white down and hit one (or both)
ouds with the olde Belgian Polish. For one thing, assuming there is anything to tales of cracking, pickling the albumen with ethanol is a plausible
defense against any possible gassing. It remains to be seen if (remains of) egg white make an exceptional base for French polishing, or for brushed-on
shellac.
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