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Need some advice........ (on finish)


madhattr88

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I have a mahogany body I want to stain a translucent red and finish high gloss.

Anyone see any problems with the following procedure?

1) Wipe body with damp cloth

2) Wipe-on Waterbased Red Stain/Dye

3) Zpoxy Grain Fill

4) Wipe-On Polyurethane

5) Wet Sand, Buff and Polish

Only spray equipment I have is a Pre-val sprayer.

Will any of the liquids interact with another? (smearing, not curing, etc)

Would oil based or alcohol based stain / dye be more stable?

Should I make a wash coat of thinned polyurethane? Is it needed? is so, why?

Thanks guys!!!!!!

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I don't see any problems with any of that. I would go with dye over stain. I believe water base and alcohol based are equally stable. I used Zpoxy to grain fill a guitar I had dyed red and ended up sealing the guitar in the Zpoxy instead of sanding back to the wood. I noticed that I could wipe on another application of dye and it would tint the Zpoxy evenly like a tint coat of lacquer, which I found useful. The only thing I would beware of is the possibilty of witness lines in your wipe on poly.

SR

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I have no idea what poly you've been using, because the complete opposite is true. Wipe-on polys are good to go after a day or so with coats being able to go on every few hours. They cure by catalytic reaction with water in the air, so unless you live in the Atacama desert or on the moon there is no problem.

On the other hand, Nitro requires a far longer to cure before reliable final buffing. It continues to shrink back over a long period of time as trapped solvents slowly outgas through the hardened external layer.

Bob123, fact-checking would be appreciated before giving out "advice" that might drastically affect somebody's work.

@madhattr88 - never used a Preval unit myself before so all I can recommend on that point is testing on scrap. Many of these steps are quite invasive to the workpiece so you need to be going into each one with total confidence else you'll have a longer journey backtracking. Rather than wiping the body with water (unless you're specifically raising the grain to knock it back) I would use Naphtha as this highlights any remaining scratches as they would look under the finish if you missed them. I think your schedule looks sound otherwise.

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I've never used ZPoxy, so take my advice with a grain of salt, however there's a bunch of guys on another forum that swapped to zpoxy for their grain filling and are now realising after time the stuff is shrinking back into the wood. So it is giving sink back, which is the whole thing we try to avoid by using grain filler.

I'm currently using west systems epoxy for that purpose. Have only been using it for a year and have not heard od sink back issues from it. I have heard other people having curing issues which they put to incorrect mixing ratios. Simple answer, buy the pumps and you wint have problems.

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Back on topic though, I did a finish a year or two ago for a customer that sounds like it is as you are wanting

Mahogany guitar, trans red with gloss finish.

I didn't use any stain or dye, I cleared the guitar, then sprayed a transparent red candy (on the top only) and then cleared again.

Just another way to approach the same finish. Here's a link to the guitar:

http://searlsguitars.com.au/Gallery/024/024gallery.html

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've never used ZPoxy, so take my advice with a grain of salt, however there's a bunch of guys on another forum that swapped to zpoxy for their grain filling and are now realising after time the stuff is shrinking back into the wood. So it is giving sink back, which is the whole thing we try to avoid by using grain filler.

I'm currently using west systems epoxy for that purpose. Have only been using it for a year and have not heard od sink back issues from it. I have heard other people having curing issues which they put to incorrect mixing ratios. Simple answer, buy the pumps and you wint have problems.

3 or 4 years ago I did a finish test on a piece of spalted wood, one side tru-oil and one side zpoxy. Both polished up beautifully. The tru-oil shrank back a little, but at the time I did not realize you had to let it cure for a few weeks before the final leveling.

I fully expected to be able to say that the zpoxy still looks great, aside from some witness lines that I noticed when doing the test. However I just went and inspected the piece, and indeed there has been some shrink back. I have no idea how long it took, since it have not looked at the piece closely for several years, but there is no denying that it did in fact shrink back.

SR

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  • 3 weeks later...

I have never had a film finish over porous woods that didn't shrink back a little over time,no matter what I used to fill the grain.

Well,that's not quite true...I coated one with bondo when I first started building and it never shrank back,but I'd rather have a little shrink back.Visible pores really don't bother me

I have used Preval quite a bit and it works,but it is so expensive that it doubles the cost of your finish by the time you are done,and you will always have orange peel to level out.

Edited by westhemann
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