Guitar And Manual Transmission Oil

[Setch]

Or Danish oil.

Or Teak Oil.

Or gunstock oil.

Or tru-oil and 0000 steel wool.

Or anyone of the hundred or so drying oils specifically devised for finishing wood, which are available for as little or less than a quart of transmission oil.

What a tool.

[Primal]

The Yamaha basses are finished with poly, not oil. That is DEFINATELY not a stock finish, whatever type of finish it may be.

[jay5]

File this under backyard guitar building, right between food color dyeing techniques and saran wrap clamping methods.

[Mattia]

File this under backyard guitar building, right between food color dyeing techniques and saran wrap clamping methods.

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Hey! There's nothing wrong with backyard guitar building!

Plenty wrong with the rest, though :-)

[Fan O' Zakk]

Unbelievable. Simple test you can do on ANY oil to see if it can be used to finish wood: pour a small, thin amount on a flat, non-absorbant surface, leave it for a day. If it's hardened or hardening by then, it'll work. If not, try something else.

[Doc]

I have a half an idea of what might be going on here.

When I ran a refinishing shop I kept getting some pieces that a "really nice little old man" nad redone about ten years or more earlier. They had a wierd look to them and were the devil to refinish. Stain took unevenly and laquer acted funny.

After about my tenth piece of serioiusly underbidding because the stuff was just such a pain in the butt I went looking for the guy. I eventually tracked down his daughter, because he had died.(this is why I was geting the work instead of him)

It turns out that in the fifties and sixties when real finishing supplies were starting to get hard to get, because there weren't all that many serious woodworkers anymore all kinds of stuff was being touted as substitutes for things like tung oil, varnish and shellac.

This guy had, no joke, a 55 gallon drum of Havoline 90 weight that he used to "bring out the color." He then hit it with a couple of coats of shellac, cheapo pre-mixed Bull's-eye brand, and a coat or two of Pratt and Lambert "38" varnish. He then rubbed the whole concoction out with pumice and more 90wt. This produced a pretty decent looking finish, but it never hardened the way it should, didn't last as long as the same process without the oil, and produced a hateful mess for any poor sucker trying to redo his refinishing.

I haven't heard of anyone pushing this type of stuff for thirty years, because there is just too much good appropriate product available today.

This is a direct result of the explosion in top quality woodworking being done today. Witness the number of you guys on this site alone. Twenty five years ago there were only a handful of semi-pro and amateur luthiers. Custom furniture makers were far fewer in number and quality. Today there are more than you can count and the work that I see exhibited on this site and others can hardly be called only amateur. I am constantly amazed at what is produced in basements and garages without the use of bells and whistles.

If you want to use an oil finish go for tung or boiled linseed. Leave the auto stuff in the car. You need something that will polymerize when it's exposed to oxygen.

[AlGeeEater]

Thanks for all of the responses while I was out of town guys. I really appreciate what you have to say about this.

Matt-Yeah that was my main argument. It's never going to dry offering pretty much 0 protection to the wood. Thanks for linking the thread over. I planned on doing that as soon as I got back. I also posted the bad advice pic too With "advice" like that he is "giving" he can lead some people to a lot of very poor results using the motor oil method.

Doc-That's pretty much what I would expect someone to do, coat it with shellac or lacquer or something. Thing is, this guy is doing just plain tranny oil with nothing over top. Thanks for that info too