gummy finish on Eastman archtop

[Dave Richard]

Customer has a 17" Eastman archtop acoustic three years old, with a 'french polish' finish: not lacquer. She applied a store bought guitar polish(Martin or Godin  brand), and something did not react well: it produced a gummy secretion, in small spots.

Anyone have any experience with this?

I suspect that the polish, commonly used on lacquer or catalysed finishes, interacted adversely with the shellac/french finish. I'm wondering what cleaner or solvent(naptha?) might safely remove the gummy spots.

[Thomas James]

Outside guess, but at one point Martin did have a bad run of a particular polish product that created finish problems. That was a while back though.

[Mark Fogleman]

Are you sure it's shellac? I thought they only used nitro. I've had problems with nitro softening after years of "Pledge" furniture polish use. Regardless, it will need to be stripped and re-applied. Nitro will probably need a fisheye eliminator added to it. If you've not used one before I would suggest dedicating a separate spray gun just for using it as it contains silicone which is about impossible to "eliminate" from a spray gun.