Behlen Stringed Instrument Lacquer

[mledbetter]

Woodcraft sells this product. It's nitro, and supposedly designed for wooden instrument finishing. Anyone have any experience using this product?

[Maiden69]

Stew Mac sells it too, as far as I have heard is good! I haven';t used it since I got no paint rig, so wait for somebody else to post. Or go to Stew site, they always have some explanation or how to use it on the bottom of the page.

[stringkilla]

Hey, yeh I've used it on a friends axe. Goes on thin at about thirty five pounds pressure, needs multiple coats to get a shine, but it dries fast and hard in about forty eight hours.

[cwoodall]

I have some on order from SM too. I got the nitro lacquer, the vinyl sealer, some retarder in case I need it down here in the south. 35 psi, eh? I have a SATA Minijet IV that I've never used (or any other spray rig for that matter). Time to live and learn I guess. I heard the Behlen stuff was pretty good, that's why I opted for it. I also got some ColorTone liquid stain (blue) that I'm going to use to tint the nitro until I get a deep but transparent shade. Lemme know if you spray before I do so I can compare notes.

Curtis

[Doc]

Anything with the Behlen name on it is as good as it gets. Their stuff pretty much sets the standard for custom funiture buiders. It also costs a bit more than most other stuff.

Their "Jet Spray" brand rattlecans are great for shading. Like doing a tobacco burst.

The canned lacquer (quarts and gallons) is just plain wonderful to work with if you have the patience to do it right.

I'm in Richmond, Va. where the humidity stays at cigar humidor levels. I use a whole bunch of retarder. It does slow your cure time down, but it also makes it lay out like a dream. I use a Sicma HVLP gun to shoot and I hardly have any orange peel problems.

Anyone who reads my posts knows that I use a ton of Deft, but when the customer has real money, or I'm doing a spec piece I grab Behlen.

Their Solar-lux stain is also great. It's colorfast and dries to workability in about twenty minutes.

No I don't get any kickbacks from them and I don't even get much of a discount.

[mledbetter]

Cool guys. Thanks. Behlan has a whole slew of products including tha dyes and even the solid pigments. I'm anxious to try it out. I'm in east tennessee so humidity is a factor for me too but i think i can control that in my shop with a sealed off (but ventilated ) spray chamber..