Pore-filing Padouk - What Would You Do?

[Our Souls inc.]

I'm currently wrapping up a sand-down and I'm debating the type of finish to apply. It's a Padouk body and I was going to finish it in water based poly, clear, no dye, and was hoping to get a high gloss smooth finish.

what would be a good pore-filler and what order would YOU do the finishing in? My plan is:

Finish the sanding ( I'm at 150 now, headed up to 320 )

apply sanding sealer

pore-fill

sand again- (220 - 600)

apply clear coats

what am I missing/planning on doing wrong, in your opinion/expertise?

Finishing is one area I definitely suck at, so I'm trying to expand my horizons a bit. Right now, I'm strictly an oil-finish or rattle-can guy........

[kpcrash]

Personally, I would use zPoxy or System 3 epoxy for the pore fill. That's just me.

[Our Souls inc.]

Thank you sir. I'm considering CA too........

[kpcrash]

The only thing I can think of with CA and Padouk, is that sometimes it has some rather large pores, so it just takes longer with CA. I love CA for tight grains since sometimes it's hard to get the epoxy to push down in there.

[Our Souls inc.]

excellent point.

[Drak]

Although I typically prefer CA over epoxy most of the time,

this situation clearly calls for epoxy pore fill, not CA.

AND, you can tint/dye the epoxy with black and have some cool black-filled pores against the pretty Paduak too.

[Our Souls inc.]

...and it all comes back.

I just remembered that padouk top you did that to. That is a cool look.

I will definitely consider that ,sir. What'd you use to get the epoxy black, tint?

[Ripthorn]

To get epoxy black, I have used artist's charcoal that I made a powder of using a file and it works well. You can also buy straight up black epoxy. Of course, Drak probably used an actual tint from his vast collection of finishing supplies which I drool over...

[Drak]

Tint's All Lamp Black, you can get a tube at Home Depot for probably less than $2.00.

Use it -very- sparingly with epoxy, the A/B epoxy doesn't like a lot of additional components.

Too much will slow the drying time, and if you really overdo it, it won't harden at all and be sort of rubbery.

You only need a -VERY- small dab ...to get 'er done.

It's the color of your skin, your skin is Black Metallic.

[Our Souls inc.]

Drak- thank you. I ended up going to the in-progress section and reviewing the Afterburner thread. I saw the warnings about the mixture there too.

i ended up using the same black dye I've been using on my guitar bodies as of late. its powdered, but did a wonderful job. The test batch hardened real nice, so I mixed up another round and grabbed an old credit card. I wiped it into the pores as much as I could, wiping and smearing/slicing the 'poxy in as much as possible. there's some thicker spots, mostly along the edges but not a whole lot to take off tomorrow.

Much appreciation for the guidance.

[Our Souls inc.]

...pant pant... more to take off than I thought..... I used a scraper to get it down to the wood, then started with the sanding . It did leave the pores full , and a nice contrast to the Padouk color, too. It also showcased every single solitary nook and scratch that the body still had. Which was good in a way, the epoxy was like a 'whoopers' highlighter. I was able to take them out as I was going, but i was surprised at how many little snaggles I had left behind....

Its looking up now though. Pores are full and smoothed off. Time to seal it all up.

[kpcrash]

BTW - if you ever run out of "old" credit cards (like I did) - you can order blank plastic cards from any badge printing company online. I got like 500 for about $30.

[Our Souls inc.]

BTW - if you ever run out of "old" credit cards (like I did) - you can order blank plastic cards from any badge printing company online. I got like 500 for about $30.

killer tip, thanks.

I can use my pick-punch to make picks out of them too........

[Our Souls inc.]

not on topic at all, but this guiar represents a few firsts for me, the biggest of which is the tensionless neck. There is absolutely NO ( 0 ) none nada zilch zero zip string pull on the neck.

I can tune it to pitch and remove the neck. ( although it wont be in tune anymore, it'll still be kinda like a harp...... )

No, you've never seen anything like it.

Yes, I like stretching the boundaries a bit.

[B. Aaron]

If you really want to expand your wood-finishing horizons, I'd highly recommend "Understanding Wood Finishing" by Bob Flexner and "Hand Applied Finishes" by Jeff Jewitt. I've read a lot of books on the subject and those two are my current favourites for a lot of reasons that I'm too lazy to type about right now.

They're also popular enough that a lot of libraries have them in their collection, which is convenient.

P.S. That neck sounds interesting. You should post photos and explain it for your guitar-makin' buddies.

Edited March 18, 2011 by B. Aaron

[orangedrop]

not on topic at all, but this guiar represents a few firsts for me, the biggest of which is the tensionless neck. There is absolutely NO ( 0 ) none nada zilch zero zip string pull on the neck.

I can tune it to pitch and remove the neck. ( although it wont be in tune anymore, it'll still be kinda like a harp...... )

No, you've never seen anything like it.

Yes, I like stretching the boundaries a bit.

This sounds like a very interesting build...

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