Color Adjustment Via Padding

[Mark Gunter]

I've been using French padding (or French polish) for many years, primarily in furniture restoration and architectural millwork restoration, but I also use it on musical instruments when called for. I had a routine repair of a crushed corner on a new piece of furniture this afternoon and decided to document the padding portion of my work, since it can be applicable to musical instruments.

A decade ago I published an article on my old website titled, "Turning Bondo Into Mahogany", and that article did a better job of showing in detail how I do this, but it is no longer available. That one involved more severe damage to mahogany panels in an elevator lobby.

1. The corner on this server has already been stabilized, filled and shaped, and is ready for padding.


2. I start by padding a very thin and fairly even coat until I get a nice shine to seal the wood and plastic filler.


3. Next, I begin to add some color by lifting some powder pigment on the tip of my index finger and rubbing it into the padded surface - then padding over it to lock the color in.








As mentioned, this is done by applying thin layers of pigments from my fingertip followed by padding to lock each layer in.


In this case, I'm using a light color (cherry) to start out, and building beyond that with some dark walnut, raw umber and finally dark van dyke brown. The pigments are from Mohawk Finishing Supplies. As a padding agent, I sometimes dissolve my own shellac flakes, and sometimes use factory-made agents. In this case I'm using Wil-Pro padding agent (also from Mohawk) because it is formulated to be a very light cut that doesn't build too quickly and remains pretty thin and stable enough for even heavy lacquer overcoats when required. Thick cuts of shellac tend to build too quickly for making the many successive color adjustments required to finesse fillers into mimicking the look of wood.

4. Once I have the touch-up done, I coat the area with lacquer. This furniture has a dead flat sheen, so I am coating it with dead flat lacquer from a rattle can. Below is the final result.


Wow, I caught this post in time to edit - I noticed that on my last business website from 2010 that I was able to put three pictures from the Bondo-to-Mahogany tutorial on my last old website at this page: http://www.commercialwoodworksolutions.com/view/7 even though the actual tutorial didn't make it. The tutorial itself survives on WayBack machine here, but the larger photos were not archived: http://web.archive.org/web/200805090...omahogany.html

I know, the old website looks pretty bad in today's interweb world, it started in 1999.

[Stephen Perry]

How is the translucency? That's the issue on instruments I work on. Nice illustration. Thanks.

[Steve VandeWater]

Amazing work! You are an artist

[Mark Gunter]

That's a good question, Stephen, and the best way for you to see is to click through each photo to get the largest resolution and have a look at the wood grain. As you can see in photo 1, there is a distinct area of bare wood (sanded to 220 grit) between the Bondo patch and the feathered, finished area. As you click each successive color step, right down to the last, you can see how much of the original grain remains visible to the end.

In my experience, padding colors in like this give you the most control over the most important facets of making an invisible repair. You can finesse and blend the colors at will layer by layer, and maintain a greater degree of translucency than with other methods that use pigments. If you pad with the grain direction for most of the color work, later, darker layers will begin to yield dark streaks that mimic wood grain. Typically, there is no need to draw in grain over a patch once this method is truly mastered.

[Mark Gunter]

Time is a factor in everything we do when earning a living, so I suppose I should say something about the time element here. I used some relief cuts, then soaked with CA adhesive and clamping to stabilize the crushed corner on Tuesday, about a half hour of work. This afternoon I used two applications of Bondo, shaped the area and fine-sanded, padded the color and finished in an hour and a half.

[Mark Gunter]

Amazing work! You are an artist

OK, you got me http://www.markgunter.net/cool_stuff...ngs-and-others

[soliver]

Very nicely done Mark!... I used to do this in the furniture repair shop at the high dollar moving company I used to work for, only we did it with layers of sprayed on lacquer (rattle can variety as you called it). You can imagine the fun buzz we had in the shop by the end of an 8 hr day ... It tended to get very opaque though. Your padding technique looks WAY better.

[Kevin Stueve]

okay Rodeo is great treatment of that subject matter. You are indeed an artist.