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Can Sealer Just Be Sanded Off?


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Hi, I'm completely new to guitar finishing but am going to attempt my first project. I am having a really hard time finding the answer to this on any forums or websites.

I have a body that was sanded and then sealed with 2 coats of a sealer called bullseye.

I am trying to decide how to finish this guitar...if I were to want to stain the wood, could I just sand off the coats of sealer? I can't stain over the sealer because it won't accept the stain correct?

Thanks for your help...

Andrew

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of course, why wouldnt you be able to? but i dont see what the big deal is with people new to refinishing. they always want to strip a guitar and leave it natural. the are usually painted for a reason.

thanks for your help...

it has a flame maple top so I'm not sure I want to paint unless I do something transparent...thanks again!

Andrew

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bullseye is a shellac type finish ,i beleive, which on itself would sand off fine; but i seem to recall some bullseye cans saying something like 'penetrates' or something on it; i might of been looking at to many things at once, but i remeber something like that, and i didnt want to touch it; that would make the stripping process hard

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I just called Zinnser today, and they said they think I would get the best results by using a stripper, so I think I'll use denatured alcohol. They said I might be able to just sand it off, but it would be harder to do, or they said I could just sand it real thin an then stain over it, but that it would be hard to make sure it was even everywhere to ensure the stain would stain even.....so all that said I'll probably strip it and then do some sanding...

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The advantage to leaving the sealer is it gives you a nice solid, smooth surface. Which is one of the most difficult parts of getting a good finish.

And it doesn't matter what type of sealer you're faced with, it seems to me you'll have to remove a pretty significant amount of the wood itself to get back to 'stainable' wood. The whole idea of sealers/pore fillers is to close up the pores in the wood in order to prevent the paint/finish from seeping in, which produces uneven results and also wastes a lot of finish/paint. So the sealer has to penetrate the wood to a certain extent--and to variable depths, since wood is a living thing, it's not uniform. So in order to guarantee that you'll be staining 'clean' wood, you'll have to sand pretty deeply, I'd think.

Instead of staining, you can use colored lacquers.

One of the compromises you make when you buy something that has been pre-built is that you can't always get exactly what you want.

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I had thought of that, but I was not planning on investing in spray equipment as i doubt i will do very many more bodies in my life, and have read that those little aerosol mixing things on stewmac don't work very well...so I thought that being able to dye an then finish with aerosol lacquer would be a better option for me...am i wrong?

i am not necessarily against investing in spray equipment, it just seemed like getting a compressor that is worthwhile would take a pretty good chunk of money...

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