Another Piano refinsihing question

[John Delacour]

At 17:12 -0400 14/4/08, Dean May wrote:

>The Hallet Davis I have recently posted pictures of has a handgrained
>rosewood finish and I am going to refinish it. Has anyone ever done a
>handgrained rosewood finish? Is it economically feasible? If not, I plan on
>just doing it in a walnut finish.

 From a French-polisher's point of view rosewood is about the easiest 
to fake and I quite often fake small areas using a ground of earth 
colours mixed with rose pink and adding the black figure with gas 
black on a small well-oiled fad.  I can give you more details if you 
are a french-polisher but I would not know how to get a realistic 
rosewood figure except by using traditional french-polishing 
techniques.

I have republished at <http://pianomaker.co.uk/technical/polishing/> 
a fine article from about 1910 about French polishing and I have 
another article from the same volume on graining, but unfortunately 
this concerns graining with oil paint, and the polishing article, I 
think, does not go into the question of faking, as we call it.  The 
man who taught me years ago was a very good faker.

JD