Sometimes what seems a small detail in construction is in fact a quite important step in order to achieve the desired result.
A good example of this is the preparation of the bridge before gluing it to the guitar. It is not enough to have it nicely shaped and sanded smooth: if you don't fill the pores and most of all put some varnish on it when it is a piece by itself, you will end up smearing some of its color on the top area surrounding it, producing an unattractive random halo of a slightly darker tone. It is enough to french polish the bridge until you see that it does not color your pad anymore; then it is no problem to glue it and do the final polishing on the top.
As far as filling the pores, there are a couple of methods that i use: one is the more traditional pumice powder; it works very well, but being the bridge a very complicated shape, it is not very comfortable to do. The other method that i mostly use these days is to 'french polish' it with a small pad and superglue. It is very fast and effective and not so much more complicated to clean.
Here you can see the difference between an unfinished bridge and a finished one:

In future articles i will go in more depth on the topic of preparing the bottom part of the bridge for gluing and also on filling the pores with pumice powder for sides, back and neck.