Varnishing

We all the know that the purpose of the varnish, on wood in general and musical instruments in particular, is to protect it - namely from dirt and changing humidity, but also from stains such as that made by the sweat on hands (and neck in the case of violins and violas).
Whereas traditional guitar making uses french polishing techniques (spirit based varnish), we use oil based varnishes. And because we stay as close as possible to the tradition of our masters, it will never be a question of a gun to apply varnishes.
Our varnish is simply a mix of colophony, mastic and copal and linseed oil (a balanced mix giving enough elasticity to the varnish to let it work and vibrate with the wood and not crack and chip).
It is beautifully transparent as well as golden in colour. We add finely ground lake pigments - always favouring the most transparents ones - to give brown, gold, honey or red shades.

For most of our instruments - including this one - we have used varnish that we have cooked ourselves.
Each coat of varnish is being polished before the next is applied.
There is here only one coat of coloured varnish in between two coats of clear (uncoloured varnish)
Each coat is dried for two days under UV black light.