Doc

What I was looking for is some feedback from someone who has used this and isn't on the retailer's most favorite son list. I've got probably 12 different water based finishes that all got great reviews from the sales reps. All of them had little problems that they just seemed to forget about when we were talking before the sale. I am tired of fumes, but until someone gives me a water based finish that approaches the ease of application of nitro with the same or better look I'll just sweat in a mask. I live in Richmond, Va. Our humidity in the winter is higher than a lot of places in the summer. This causes us to have to be creative problem solvers when dealing with finishes. Ninty five degrees and nintyfive percent humidty makes summer finishing challenging.

Check and see if W. Grainger can ship to the frozen North. They sell all kinds of explosion proof fans and their prices are reasonable for what you get. Good web site, too.

Getting a finish like that on walnut is a piecs of cake. Mix up the dye for the edges first. Do a test sample and get it as brown as you want it and about the strength so that you need three coats to get it dark enough. Take some of that, thin it down a little more, add a spot of yellow or light orange. Stain the whole thing with the second mix.. Let it dry. Get it to the color you want in the middle all over. Then take a rag and make what the Brits call a mouse. Wad one small rag up and wrap it in another. Make it the size of a golf ball. Dip it in your darker stain. Wipe most of it off on a scrap and then use this to shade your body edges. Work from the middle out, don't wipe like a racetrack. Cheaper than an airbrush and actually just as fast. If you're using most walnut it won't start out with much red or orangish color, just the plain greyish brown. Remember to use a lot of light coats. This hides the "stripes" from the mouse.

Most of the funiture that I build is either Bird's eye or flame maple. If anything the dye will make the eyes pop even more. Use any kind of transparent stain. Stay away from m**wax type stains 'cause they will muddy things up. Lee Valley and Stew-Mac sell analines. You don''t need to counterstain, just go for the red. Another tip: Be careful about using too much glue. It will tend to pop out of the birdseyes if you use too much and you'll get little white dots there. Think of them as little 90 degree channels running straight at you..

The only thing that water based topcoats give off is a little ammonia. They all seem to be universally a lot safer than the nitro that I've shot forever. I haven't used the one you all are talking about but I have just not had any real luck with water based stuff in a high build high gloss application. Does this stuff get the "television blue" haze to it? And how long do you need to wait before you can buff it out? Also is there any critcal window on recoat and how is intercoat adhesion? Anybody got any experience with this stuff 'cause I'm tired of fumes?

The Deft you have to watch out for is the non-rattle can variety. The stuff in the spray cans is absolutely the best thing that is readily available outside of professional coatings, and it even beats some of those. The gallon can variety saves you a bunch of money though if you have an HVLP rig. I know a professional luthier that starts his pricing on flat tops at close to what some cars cost and he uses Deft for most of his clear coats. If your going clear all the way over stain I don't know of anything that looks better or goes on easier.

There probably are some solvents that will take the nasty stuff off, but I think that you will have a gooey mess left. Acetone will normally soften stuff like this and you can go at it with a wire brush afterwards to get out the stuff in the crevices. I'd go mechnical with a chisel that you don't care too much about and skip the solvents altogether if you can. Whatever you decide get as much out as you can 'cause it's just an aggravation looking to happen.

Baking just raises the temperature and makes things happen much faster. Good things and oh yeah bad things too. 350 Farenheit is 177 C.

Hi there AlgeeEater, If you are interested here are a few tips. 1) Get all of the Elmers out. All of it. Use a chisel if you have too. It is an acrylic goo only good to putty nail holes under latex paint. Nasty bad goo. 2)Mix up the Bondo and slather it on. Until it cures all the way it's easy to shape and takes any finish great. Sand it untill all the even minor scratches are out. This means to like maybe 280 grit. It's easier to sand than to fill later. 3) Sanding sealer is a lacquer primer. It has stearates in it which are chemicals that have a soapy greasy feel and make it easy to sand. I tint mine myself to a lighter version of what ever I'm shooting. Dark grey under black, Rust red under reds and oranges, etc. Remember, some of the stuff we use is mainly for cars and called primer. some is for wood and called sealer. Not much difference in makeup or application. 4) Put your color on in any gloss, the top coats and the rubout give you the final gloss, satin, etc. 5) Be careful with Deft. I use a ton of it, but because it is a brushing lacquer it drys more slowly and sometimes will "pull' a color coat if you put it on top. Always save some heartache and make a test board. There is a ton of bad information out there. A lot of it is available at a Home Depot paint department. Look in your yellow pages and find where the auto body guys buy their paint. The heathen rednecks behind the counter are generally very knowledgable and are usually really generous with help. You should be buying most of your stuff to do this there anyhow. It's just better stuff. If you want to avoid them go to Re-ranch. (I can call them heathens cause I are one too.) Happy trails.

I agree, go with the foam. You want a coat that is thick wet and uniform. You can rub the flats out with a block and paper, but the better the coat the less work you have to do.

Nice looking work. You've probably got polyester on the green part. I'd leave it alone and just finish to the to where you're happy. It's looking good now. You can't re-coat polyester, as far as I know, so leave it be. The easy way to ebonize a fret board is to buy one made of ebony to start with . The cost isn't much different than rosewood. Stew-Mac sells a stain to even out any sap wood (the light stuff) tahn may be there, but I like the variation. The same stain will darken rosewood to ebony. Minwax type spirit stains will not give the really dark colors, and the ones cabinetmakers use come in gallons and can be a pain to use.

Dan, I haven't needed anything from them in a while, but "Parts Express" sells alot of stuff to the DIY audio crowd. They are on line. I seem to remember grill cloth in their catalog. All of this stuff is a lot more expensive that what you get at "Stich and Sew" but it is specialty stuff and there are only so many of us lunatics doing this kind of thing out there.

Lets say "adjust for experience." If your dad does furniture he probably has 1) the right stuff to use and 2) enough experience to keep you out of trouble. Take some lacquer thinner and put it on the twisted up point of a rag Go to a place on the back, like where the neck plate is and see if that dissolves the clear when you rub it. If it does you have lacquer and are home free. The furniture stain he has 99 times out of 100 is the right stuff to use. Stain the wood. Wipe off anything that you get on the old finish immediately. Let it dry in a warm dry place for 24 hours. Clear coat everything carefully. Read some of the old posts on how to do the clear coat. If it isn't lacquer then you have a diffierent problem. Re-post what you find.

Totally agree with Lovekraft. Go to Reranch , but their stuff, follow their directions to the letter and step back in time.

I just did a saga tele kit. I sealed it with white shellac. Then hit it with metallic gold undercoat. Then three coats of Inca gold, a copper sort of burnt orange. Then ten coats of clear gloss nitro lacquer. I havent't rubbed it ourt'cause it hasn't cured yet but it looks three feet deep. I think that's what you want. This stuff is all automotive product that i bought from a local specialty paint supplier. The stuff is real Candyapple Metalflake and a little pricey but worth it. it comes in any color you could want and varies according to the color undercoat you use. Look at the metalflake.com website. Done right htis stuff will look like you pulled your new puppy out of a time machine.

Have you got any idea wht the original finsih is? If you have nitrocellulose lacquer stain the wood with a spirit type stain. It shouldn't bite to the lacquer if you wipe the overage off immediately. especially since this is old fully cured lacquer, (if it is lacquer.) Test an area with your proposed top coat and if it bonds your home free and lucky. I've overcoated finishes that I know are 30 years old 'cause i did 'em the first time. With good to excellent results.

I can tell you my approach. There are plenty of differing opinions. Grit to use. Use the cabinet maker's rule of thumb. 150 is as far as you need to go before stain and sealer. If you go too fine you can interfere with bonding. The number of coats of primer. There is no hard and fst rule. It depends on how porous the wood is and what kind of sealer and finish you are using. Post me the type of wood and the type of finish and I'll try to give you an answer. Alder will take a bunch, like three or four coats of sealer minimum. As for your fuzzy problem, welcome to alder. It has a tendency to have these hot spots, It's not anything you did it just does this. That's one of the reasons that I will not build cabinets or furniture out of the stuff. A trick that sometimes works pretty well is to thin white glue down about 3:1 with water. This is called glue sizing and is heavily used by the furniture industry.. Paint your fuzzy area and let it dry for 24 hours. Sand it with 150. Repeat if needed.This will first harden the fibers then cut them off. This occasionally will cause you some trouble with some stains not penetrating as much as other areas but is a minor problem compared to the fuzzies. Search the forum for info on lacquer vs enamel. Quickly, lacquer cures by evaporation and is redissolvable with thinner even after it cures. This means that the following coats fuse to the last coat. Enamel cures by chemical reaction with oxygen and each coat is independant. Enamels and polys have to be thoroughly scuff sanded to break the gloss and leave little tiny scratches for the next coat to bond to. You sand lacquer to smooth it out and get rid of bug feet and dog hairs that fall in. Anyone who owns a Husky knows what I'm talking about. Lacquer dries faster, generally, and I think it is easier to buff out. If you want my opinion I think that lacquer gives a better looking finish and with stuff available on line, like from Re-raanch and others, its worth develping the basic skills needed to work with it. If you want to do a solid black it doesn't matter whether the color coat is flat or glossy except that generally flat is easier to work with. I use an HVLP gun and tint my sanding sealer to the color that I want, then shoot it with a gazillion coats of gloss. If you try to coat enamel with lacquer it either won't bond and the clear will eventually flake off or it will almost immediately react and turn into a really crinkly nasty mess. Use like with like. Hope this helps.

Remember the rule of thumb for chemical reactions is that every 10 degrees centigrade that you raise the temperature doubles the speed of the reation. You can clear coat the guard as long as you have neutralized the reaction. With salt this means washing it off real well and getting it bone dry. It's still going to have a tendency to lift at the corrroded areas in time.

For the last ten years my clamping frames with the several hundred dollars worth of Jorgenson screw clamps have sat in a corner unloved and unused 'cause I built a vacuum press. This will glue any wierd twisted or irregular shape as well as nice flat ones. I run a venturi vacuum pump off of my compressor and it can put as much as 1700 lbs per square on the wood if I need it. It also sucks the moisture right out of the glue and thus cuts down on your clamp time. If I was gluing up a flat top or arch top I wouldn't use it, 'cause it would squish 'em flat, but solid bodies are perfect for this method. There are a number of websites that the guys that mke this stuff have up. Fine Woodworking magazine has had innumerable articles. My basic setup probably cost me 250.00 bucks US and I have a 5' x 9' table! I could press 8 bodies at once if I had lost what is left of my mind. This technique will absolutely flat press anything. To date I have had 0 glue line failures.

Hey Monkey, Where are you? British Isles or Austrailia maybe? You guys sure have a lot of restrictions. Over here they make retarder for lacquer and that's the only thing that I've ever heard it called. If I had to guess, from the smell it's got some xylene and toluene in it. I know meths won't work 'cause they're methyl alchohol with some funky purple stuff in it and are only good in shellac based finishes. No alcohol will mix with lacquer. If you're having to crank your pressure up too high you still haven't thinned it out enough. Using a conventional gun I shoot at maybe 40 pounds of pressure max. It may spray but it won't lay out decently and you'll get orange peel from hell. Oddly thicker finish also has a greater tendency to form runs cause it drys more slowly. You may find that just thinning your finish out more accomplishes what you want. That's what you have to do with an HVLP gun. Some stuff I have to cut 3:1 thinner to lacquer. The cobwebs are pretty neat looking. Hope this helps.

You're not gonna find it at your home improvement store. Try your local automotive specialty supplier. In Richmond, Va. Herald Sales carries all of this kind of good stuff. They also can tell you the basics of application. The last quart that I bought cost me about $225.00, and I have a commercail shop. Yeah two hundred and twenty five dollars. Ouch. There are also some internet suppliers who stock it. A quart will do a bunch of bodies, but it is the devil to use if you don't use a gun on a regular basis. It does not come in rattle cans, so you need to have a good spray rig. Boy does it look neat when done right.

As long as you have a good wood to wood fit on a shim you shouldn't have any trouble. Don't try to use glue as a filler in the joint between the shim and body. Make sure your fit is tight and use the same type of wood. Use some of the scrap if you have it. Neck angles are adjusted this way all of the time.

Going on the "chain is as strong as it's weakest link" idea you can look at the average neck and see that it doesn't take a lot of wood to hold up. The red devil pictured above shows however that the quality of the wood is really critical. There are things called stress cracks from drying and wind checking from the trees life that become really important as you remove wood. When you cut your blank take a piece from the top and bottom and tap them, hard. on the table saw and see if cracks open easily. This means that you do have to buy more wood than you absolutely have to have, but you have to buy more wood than you absolutely have to have. That or buy your blank from a reputable supplier who checks this for you. Another funiture maker's trick is to slice the wood lengthwise into a couple of strips and reglue it. This will deaden the sound quality some but will give you a stronger board. Good glue joints are stronger than wood. Les Paul's are glued up from three pieces and seem to sound pretty good.

Just to scare you a bit. Make sure that your motor is isolated from your fumes but also make sure that your fan blade is aluminum or plastic. Twenty years ago we had a shop in town that had a steel fan blade. The guys there had it set up so that it pulled rather than pushed air. This caused lacquer dust to build up on the blades. They didn't clean it. One fine day at lunch time a chunk of the crap fell off unbalancing the fan which caused the blade to rub on the housing shooting sparks out. Luckily only one guy was still in the shop. They found him about a block away. The front of the building blew off and nearly everything in the shop followed. Ever since then the local fire marshals have busted our chops for some strange reason. You also need to make sure that your outlets and light fixtures are explosion proof. Put in a plexiglass "window",seal it with caulk and put flourescent fixtures in back for a cheap sloution. Leave the outlets out of the booth area.

I'd start out with Muratic acid. This is a nasty concoction that is used by the masonry trades to clean up brickwork. It's available at Lowe's or Homer Depot. I'd make a really diluted solution and try the metal in a cold bath of it. Rules. 1) Always wear goggles that cover everything. Don't take them off until after you've washed your hands. 2) Always wear gloves. The longer the cuff the better. 3)Aprons are good too. Water repellent ones. 3) Work in a well ventilated area, like the outside. Away from your house. 4) Remember that every 10 degrees C you increase the temperature of a reaction will double the speed of the reaction. As some reactions give off heat they can self speed up until they go boom. Try a small piece of whatever before you do a large piece. 5) Chemical fire extinguishers are very necessary. 6) "Do like you oughta and add acid to water." Never the other way around. Freshman chemistry 101. Never forget some things. 7) Magnesium is a metal that has a tendency to explode and burn in all manner of rections. Don't use it. 8) Use baking soda to neutralize the acid. Make up a jug of soda and water before you start. This is a weak base and pretty safe stuff. 9) Strong bases will also age metal but they are much more dangerous. If you get a strong base in your eyes you will be blind with no recourse so stay away from them. This is a process that can really cause some problems for the inexperienced, but if you're careful you should be okay. 10) My last rule is the most important one. If you think that something is too dangerous it usually is. Listen to the little voice going "I dont think we know what we're doing."