Blush In My Nitro?

[verhoevenc]

Hey, I'm wondering what this is?!

Fromt he reranch description I'm thinking this may be blush... which would makes sense due to the fact I live and spray in miami which is very humid. However they make it seem like blush will apear as you're spraying it, this only came up after I started finish sanding?!

Any ideas on whether it's blush or not? What it is for sure? How to get rid of it? Best bet to sand it out? Get blush eraser?

Chris

[thegarehanman]

Let's establish what we're talking about here. Is it the darker strip in the middle of the pic going from top to bottom?

[marksound]

Or is it the lighter areas that look like they could be sandthroughs?

[verhoevenc]

It's the lighter almost foggy hazzy white areas.

And no, it's not bare wood.

Chris

[verhoevenc]

For those of you with sand-through and blush experiance... when you sand through does it FEEL like wood or does is still have a smoothish feel to it (i guess that could be from the 1200 grit grain too....) cause maybe ya'll are right, it might be sand-through cause this stuff disappears when the body has water on it. Or will blush do that as well?

Chris

PS: Here's more pics of some of the other areas I found this in:

[mikhailgtrski]

I'm no expert, but I think you've got some sand-through there. You have to be really careful when wet sanding because, as you found, it's hard to see sand-through areas when it's wet.

[marksound]

That looks like sand-throughs to me.

[verhoevenc]

Yup, they were.... I just scuffed the whole guitar a bit with 400 and sprayed a new wet coat... will do 2 more today, maybe some more tomorrow to build up the finish again. They disappeared right away when finish was put on top of 'um. Either way... I'm NOT waiting another month of cure time this time around, it drove me crazy, especially since it all ended up being for no good anyways. So this time I'm gunna do like reranch and stewmac both hint at, wait about a week to cure then sand and polish. And from there I'll just be really careful not to put it near anything that'll scratch/dent it easily... maybe I'll go back and take everything apart again 2 months down the road and re-buff it though (cause somewhere I read that maiden sanded and buffed his nitro after only a short cure time and it worked fine, but later down the road it lost some of it's shine when it shrunk... but like I said, I can deal with RE-buffing it, that's no biggy, it's the wait because I've NEVER heard it that's killing me!!!)

Chris

[mikhailgtrski]

Good thing you're doing a natural finish... if you had sanded into dye you'd probably want to keep all sharp objects out of sight.

I'm going to try a fan/heat lamp curing method that algee showed me... hopefully it'll speed things up by a couple of weeks. I'll know how well it works in a month or so.

[thegarehanman]

Now that I'm looking at it on another pc, it's pretty obvious that's a sand through. Sorry man; looks like it's more waiting for you.

[Drak]

I'm NOT waiting another month of cure time this time around, it drove me crazy, especially since it all ended up being for no good anyways. So this time I'm gunna do like reranch and stewmac both hint at, wait about a week to cure then sand and polish. And from there I'll just be really careful not to put it near anything that'll scratch/dent it easily... maybe I'll go back and take everything apart again 2 months down the road and re-buff it though (cause somewhere I read that maiden sanded and buffed his nitro after only a short cure time and it worked fine, but later down the road it lost some of it's shine when it shrunk... but like I said, I can deal with RE-buffing it, that's no biggy, it's the wait because I've NEVER heard it that's killing me!!!)

You should look for either another hobby to pursue or find another type of finish to use, because if you shoot lacquer and can't handle the cure/wait period, you're simply looking at a second or third rate crappy guitar in the end for all the time you've invested in it so far, and that's not my opinion, that wll be a dead-on truth if you buff it out in a week. Seems like a pretty poor tradeoff to me.

Hell, 2-3 months is really the required time if you don't want it shrinking back on you, so I would -highly- recommend you give up spraying lacquer alltogether and find some other means of finishing your guitar projects.

...Or learn patience.

What you are going thru is your learning curve, and you cannot short circuit it, you can only make it LONGER by making more mistakes trying to hurry everything up simply because you don't have the required patience to wait things out.

Your own impatience will not make that lacquer set up any faster, and your impatience will ruin an otherwise perfectly nice lacquer job, so do you want your learning curve to be as short and painless as possible, or do you wish to prolong it further than necessary by making more mistakes than needed?

Patience, glasshoppuh, patience wins the day, and she is a sometimes cruel and evil mistress, but bow to her you will, sooner or later.

[Southpa]

I was going to say something along those lines myself. I'm in the process of overhauling my bathroom. I stripped down my oak toilet seat and and am spraying Minwax clear gloss poly on it. You can bet its going to be totally cured before I sit on it. Luckily I have a temporary plastic seat to use until then.

[verhoevenc]

But then why does stewmac say all that stuffa bout "5-6 days" as well as reranch? Also, Drak is it just BUFFING before that time that you don't recommend.... or sanding too? Cause I can wait to buff, but if I wait another month, and then just end up sanding through again I'm gunna be SO mad! So is it OK to sand after say.... a week/2 weeks, and then buff a month after?

Chris

[Drak]

But then why does stewmac say all that stuffa bout "5-6 days" as well as reranch?

I'm going to guess it's because their way involves presenting the flattest possible surface to the lacquer as possible, so no matter how much shrinkback happens after you've buffed it in a week, shrinkback against a dead-flat surface is, well, still dead flat shrinkback, give or take. It's all 'about' the preparation, or all IN the preparation, you might say. They (as I remember) go to great lengths to do lots and lots of different stages...multiple stages of grain fillers, multiple stages of sanding sealers, etc., all those stages present the lacquer a really dead-flat surface to dry against, more or less. Also, they're speaking to hobbyist builders, and they know that hobbyist builders are in a big hurry to play those guitars they just built, so I think there is a slight bit of disinformation there (my opinion).

You ask anyone who has shot lac for years and they'll tell you lac simply does not dry that quick, and trying to finish up a lac finish in a weeks' time is a mistake, unless you artificially dried it, like under heat lamps (Algee seems to have found a good inexpensive way to do this btw, maybe that's the answer you need)

I mean, they mean well and all that, but both those companies are in business to make a profit and sell product, that's just a fact, so I think their information is 'geared' to sell product (all those stages using all those products dontchaknow ), and not 100% concerned with doing things the absolute correct way, even tho their ways do yield results.

Also, Drak is it just BUFFING before that time that you don't recommend.... or sanding too? Cause I can wait to buff, but if I wait another month, and then just end up sanding through again I'm gunna be SO mad! So is it OK to sand after say.... a week/2 weeks, and then buff a month after?

OK. Well, just because you know that someone in a house is a thief and stole your Ipod, you don't need to set dynamite charges all around the house and blow the whole damn family to Kingdom Come, a little detective work is in order sometimes to pick out the lone bandito .

So let's ask, why are you sanding thru your finish?

1. Maybe you're using your coarser grits too long.

2. Maybe you're being too aggressive with your coarse grits

3. Maybe the lac coats haven't been built up enough yet, you need to spray many more coats before sanding

4. Maybe your wood has swelled from you wetsanding with water and caused high spots in the wood where it seeped underneath the finish and swelled parts of your wood (most noticable around pot holes and such interruptions in the finish) and caused slight irregular humps, which you sanded thru in your levelling process.

5. Maybe you just need some more experience at wetsanding lac finishes, it takes time and repeated tries to really get the hang of it you know.

Long story short, the only thing really going on here is that you're having a problem with sandthrus and getting mighty impatient to be 'a strummin' on, and a whoopin' and a hollerin' on that there guit-fiddler of yourn, and your logical answer to that is to buff out sooner. Now, does that seem like the proper answer to your problem?

Go back thru your steps and find the weak link in the chain where things are going wrong, correct that one thing, and proceed forward like a good detective would (and most good detectives don't carry dynamite around with them, or shotguns)

[verhoevenc]

Problem solved: I figured since I've gotta re-do the finishing process anyways.... I'm not TOO worried about little scratches and what not... lets mess with it! SO I put all the hardware on, etc. strung her up and played her (didn't have to move the bridge of the saddles a single BIT to get it intonated... that thing was dead on from the get-go! (although, I was only playing it unplugged (ground came loose when I put the electronics in so I didn't get sound) but as far as I could tell from the acoustic sound it was spot on intonated with NO adjustment!). So yeah... now that I've played it, seen it works, feels, sounds fine... I think I can wait another month.

Chris

PS: Is there a reason you always speak in riddles, metaphors, etc... raised by confucious? lol

[marksound]

Hell, 2-3 months is really the required time if you don't want it shrinking back on you

Yup. I know of a guy on another forum who won't touch his nitro for at least 6 months, sometimes up to a year.

[Drak]

PS: Is there a reason you always speak in riddles, metaphors, etc... raised by confucious? lol

Yes, I was bitten by my tarantula chain long ago, and it nested in my ectodermal layer and mutated a few miscreant cellular bad guys into my bloodstream, nothing I can do about it.

[verhoevenc]

hahahaha.... intersting..... is it just me or every now and then do you see people on PG that you go.... "I wonder what that person looks like?!" Drak is one.

Chris

[mikhailgtrski]

"I wonder what that person looks like?!" Drak is one.

Careful what you wish for... have you not heard tales of the W.O.D.?

[verhoevenc]

Can't say I have. Care to enlighten??

Chris

[marksound]

"I wonder what that person looks like?!" Drak is one.

Careful what you wish for... have you not heard tales of the W.O.D.?

I've heard tales about a frightening shirtless pic.

[Drak]

A funny anecdote, did you know that you cannot search for WOD in the search engine?

I remember once I tried to find all the posts with WOD in them, but it wouldn't 'take', like you can't take pics of a vampire sorta thang.

Cool.

He has been blasphemed and abandoned to the blackness of the Castle Underworld anyway, he ate my pet termatophilia a few months ago, so he's toast for awhile.