Very interesting questions!
As in your order:
1) Firstly, I have very rarely read any books on French polishing, track down old books from the Library however, I do look at YouTube just to see if there are any new tips or tricks but without success. They are often just semi skilled polisher's or others showing themselves polishing but in reality they are just going through the motions pretense fools nobody. So I can't help you with that one.
2) Small nibs embedded in the surface? well the answer is in the question! If you are getting nibs / dust on the surface of the work despite keeping your workshop clean, then perhaps the preparation of the wooden surface is not sufficient and there could be minute pimples on the surface to ensure that there is no dust at all. If you have a spray pump then you could try and blow over the surface with the air gun.
Failing that you may be having problems because you are polishing with a too wet rubber and thus causing the surface to become too sticky and therefore likely to attract dust and fine grim.
Another cause of nibs on the surface, is that you are possibly not changing your rubber rag frequently. If you don't change your rag regularly dust and excess oil build up on the rubber surface and then can go nowhere other tan the polished surface.
Try this! Open your rubber and add a little pumice powder as this acts like a very fine grinder for an extremely fine finish.
3) Have I published the steps to French polishing? That is a good question as I have written a great deal of French polishing.
I have written that might help you, is Finishing stages & Stiffing off I wrote that on 23/08/2012
And I also wrote French polishing and rubber making on 21/01/2011 Both these items should help you.
To find them please scroll down the right hand side of my Blog, where you will find (Blog Archive) a list of posts showing the appropriate years etc click on the year required and search.
I hope this will help you in you quest to solve the problems? Thanks for your enthusiasm and interest in French polishing.
Regards,
Andrew.
