Buffing a satin finish to gloss

 
In several guitar forums I frequently visit, there are discussions about "wether" and "how to" pimp a plain guitar without much cosmetical appointments. Many switch tuners or tuner buttons, annother opportunity is to replace saddle and nut with ones made of bone or switch the bridge pins to improve sound and looks.

The propably most extensive and at the same time irreversible step-up that might be done is to buff a satin finish to high gloss. I had the idea quite early but never seriously considered it a real opportunity until I read some people's reports who did it with remarkable results. Now it is my turn to add annother report.

My D-16GT had satin back and sides out of the box. Since I got it used it turned out to be something like my guinea pig and finally I decided to proceed the buffing on it.

Someone recommended automobile polish called "McGuiar's scratch-X". I read something about it and found out that it is a stuff capable of polishing away scratches from finished surfaces. So I looked for something similar in the local auto-shops and stumbled across a stuff called "Sonax grove cleaner". It can be found on the European market, at least in Germany.
 It is capable of leveling small scratches and does not contain wax, cleaning additives or solvents. You should beware of those because you'll never know how the laquer will interact with car waxing ingredients or solvents.

Instead of cutting an old t-shirt into 4"x4" pieces I bought polishing and cleaning patches at the same location.

Now this is how the C.F.-Martin satin gloss surface looks like:

I put less than 1/2" of polish onto the first patch and started polishing the side from the neck heel, working on a piece of about 10 inches at a time.

First I proceeded circular movements and tried to work on the treated surface as evenly as possible. At the same time I watched out not to affect the top. Since the polish is paste-like and gets drier and drier the more you polish, I could easily control the working area.

After a while I started working in the direction of the wood grain; I did not see much of a change until I took a fresh patch and rubbed along the grain. Almost suddenly the treated surface turned to gloss, better than I had expected.

In the picture below the area I already have worked on can easily be distinguished from the still satin surface of the upper bout:

After having worked around both sides from the neck joint to the endpin I started buffing the back.

Again I worked on a 4"x5" area at a time, partintioning the back into four working areas. Each one took me about 5 - 10 minutes. All in all the whole back was buffed to gloss after half an hour.

I also polished the neck heel because the neck itself had already turned glossy by playing leaving only the heel satin.

After a final polishing of back and sides with a fresh patch the results are satisfacory enough. There are clear mirrored images of lamps and (hard to bear) my face.

Look at that beautiful shine on the side

Clear reflections on the back.

The wood grain and colour are deeper and richer, the whole appearance is enhanced. I had intended to even improve the gloss by working over back and sides with a polishing compound made to achiev the highest gloss possible but I'll have to think twice about that.