For the past few weekends I managed to get the solera finished with a polyurethane varnish. Honed chisel & plane blades on 400-1200 grit wet n' dry sandpaper glued to a glass plate. Made a shooting board for planing the two top halves centre join.

Thicknessing the top with stanley no #5 plane. Got a lot of tear out no matter how much I sharpened the blade. So used 200-400 grit sandpaper.

Shellac

Shellac 59 gram to 120ml methylated spirit for pre sealing sander mixture and final french polish.

Planing the centre join. As well as having an uneven bottom plane my plane is too short. It was leaving the join convex. I tried to flatten on a 200 - 320 grit sandpaper but this ol' dog refused to budge...It took a lot of patience.

After several attempts at different sanding blocks using recycled wood I found the wood was very slightly warped. The slight variation along the contour of the sand paper made a huge difference in the join. I checked the centre line seam by holding the pieces up to direct sunlight. Each time I thought I had it I would sleep on it and look with fresh eyes the next day only to find I needed to tweak it just a little more. Tiny pin holes of light were along the lower bout seam and I learnt from different sites that this is the most important area to have a perfect join. I eventually used sand paper glued to a new piece of wood - very straight. It worked like a dream. Yay... I eventually got the join. 

Preparation of glueing the top using the Spanish Rope method...

I based my method of tying from studying a video of Antonio Aparicio doing an amazing rope method on a custom build guitar. He is a real maestro. My tie wasn't nearly tight enough so I pushed an extra wedge in places to get the tie super tight.

I was a little worried about my cross-over tie in the lower bout not being centred enough so when banging in the three other large wedges to gain extra tightness I did my best to centre it. I'm very happy to have finally joined the halves. A eureka moment. Now onto the rosette.