Doc

Guys, You are doing something very wrong. I just finished a couple of fairly open grained walnut telecaster body with spray cans just to see how they worked. I figure I throw my opinions at ya'll often enough I should make sure that things I haven't do for a while are still valid. Two coats of sanding sealer and six maybe seven full wet coats of gloss Minwax polyurethane and it's ready to go. That was one can until it started to sputter and a little from another. Fifteen coats a can means you are probably way too light. I did the one with Deft and it took more coats but just a little over a can of sanding sealer and most of a can of gloss. What brand were you using? The cheap stuff is really low solids and isn't a bargain in the long run. Four cans should do a giant hollow body Chet Atkins Special. You shouldn't have had to shake it up much. Most gloss doesn't even have marbles in it because what you are agitating in the satins and semi-glosses is the flattener which dulls down the gloss. It's a white chalky powder that settles to the bottom of the can and forms a gloppy goo. None of that in gloss. There is actually a little gaget called a finish guage that lets you measure the thickness of your wet finish. Automotive paint suppliers and such give away cheap ones. Your finish should be almost thick enough to sag but not quite. I know "how thick is that?" depends on what you're shooting, how much you've thinned it and what the temp and humidity are. (I know you don't thin cans). If I remember right most stuff should be three to five mils wet.

I'm gonna guess birch with that swirly figure. I'd be really surprized if it's any knid of mahogany, African or Honduras.

Take and make a ball of grain filler about half the size of a dime. Let it cure about 48 hours somewhere pretty warm, like on the top of your refrigerator. Put it in a plastic drink bottle cap. Fill it with your oil stain. See if it dissolves. If it doesn't, no problem. If it does 50-50 shot. Most folks don't grain fill for oil 'cause you're going to have a flat to just barely glossed finish and the pores barely show. You're better off to wet sand a couple of layers of oil using the wet oil as a lube not water and let the slurry fill the pores.

The reason to use semi-paste instead of regular wood filler is the open time. The acetone based wood filler will work but it will set up so fast that you will have do a boatload of sanding. It's just hard to wipe off the excess in time. The acrylic types of wood filler set up slower but make a hazey mess unless you are using a solid color. If you're lacquering with an opaque color you could probably get away with it. One of the reasons I don't like some of the epoxy type products is that they are very heat sensitive. Chemical reactions double in speed for every 10 degrees C that you up the material. Last week my shop, tin roof and no windows for 2500 sq/ft, was over 120F and the humidity was over 85%. Lacquer was dry to sandable in under five minutes even thinned down and retarded 20%. I don't want to think how fast epoxy would cure and solvent based wood filler wouldn't even get off of the putty knife. They obviously sell a ton of the stuff and some guys here swear by it. Different strokes, whatever works.

Remember what you're doing here. The best thing about polyurethane is that it is resistant to nearly everything, even paint stripper. The stuff you coat it with will not bite into it chemically. By sanding it you are putting a gazillion tiny scratches that the top coat can flow into and bond to. It bonds mechanically. I would just sand the whole thing until it is uniformly dull, no gloss left anywhere. Don't go coarder tahn 220 but don't go finer either. Get all of the sanding powder out of the scratches before you start witht he new stuff. I've rushed this part before and paid for it when the finish lifts down the road.

Wes, Did you actually read my post or are you too enamoured with your own cuteness to pay attention? Oh that's right. You're from Texas. Should have paid more attention to your tag line. I do try new stuff all of the time. Some of it works, but most of it doesn't. It especially doesn't work the way that the average salesman tells you it will or especially the way that the website or catatalog describes. Shops that chase the latest and greatest in everything have one thing in common. They usually lose a lot of money and go broke. Innovation is nice but it isn't always the best solution. There are some advantages to using catalyzed products. I shoot some catalysed finishes for specific cuatmers. I keep a five gallon container of West system on the shelf and use it for all kinds of bizarre stuff. I even have used it tinted as a filler years before anyone packaged it that way. Not my own original idea, I picked it up from other polite cooperative woodworkers. My experience, and it is only my experience, is that there are more problems encountered with them for the average user. You guys maybe don't remember conversion varnish. This was the greatest thing ever. A two coat high build easy to work with wonder finish. Five years after any exposure to UV it turned lemon yellow and shattered, not just cracked. It turns out that the fumes are really injurious long term. Every cabinet shop in town had switched to it. The guys that don't care after the one year warranty expired still use it. The guys who do don't. I don't notice anyone here even mentioning it. Ten years ago it might have been all the rage because it was new and better. My opinion, and it's only that, is that someone just starting out is going to make more mistakes than an experienced finisher. My experience also is that oil based grain filler is easier to fix. If you have to have a clear filler it's obvious that you will have to either sand and fill with finish or use an epoxy. Epoxys all have one thing in common. They use a catalyst. This is what accelerates the chemical reaction involved in their hardening and not really needing a cure time. To my knowledge they are all based on some pretty nasty chemicals. Di-benzyl peroxide and cadmium to name a couple. Safety is a concern of mine because I've used a lot of this stuff for a long time and I'm starting to pay for chemical exposure. I know that the solvents in oil base stuff can be nasty but I don't think that they are as nasty as the epoxy family, They just smell less dangerous. I don't like any of the grain fillers and wish someone would come up with an easy to use alternative to what we have. I am not a chemist. I'm just a woodworker turned psychologist who has to slog tharough the high gloss swamp on occasion. Now let's all play nice and go build some guitars.

I don't think that there is anything that doesn't look good with blue. Look at the stuff posted on the GOTM archives. Lots of really nice virieties of blue axes. I'm patial to gold but that's just my taste.

Sanding sealers are made to build base coats. They are softer versions of the top coat, not just something to seal in stain etc. Use sanding sealer,sanding really well between coats untill you have a finish as smooth as you want your final finish, then apply your top coat, be it polyurethane or lacquer. Let the sanding sealer do the heavy lifting.

First comment to "Westhemann" Nice snide put down earlier. It seems that a lot of you guys on this post have a manners problem. I have a very large box full of the "get with the times" garbage that salesmen have assured me would replace the fuddy duddy stuff I was using. This includes about five different generations of waterborn finish and epoxy whatevers. I've used epoxy filler. I have no trouble with new stuff but only if it does a better job, whatever that means to you. I've found it to be tempermental and much more problematic than "old guy" style semi-paste. I don't read all of the posts here, but there seem to be a lot concerning difficulties with catalysed products in general. This has to do with how the stuff works chenically. I was commenting on the use of two part epoxy glue as a filler. It's glue, not filler. Stewart Mac sells an epoxy filler that I've tried and I found it to be overly sensitive to temperature and humidity. It was also a beast to sand after it cured overnight. I've always hated semi-paste but find it easier to deal with and more predicatble. Especially so for a beginner. There are a lot of terms that get thrown around here and if you haven't read a whole lot of threads can confuse you. Poly is not just poly. The Minwax type of one part polyurethane is a far cry from the two part automotive paint that a lot of guys here use. The latter is a professional only, highly toxic specialty product that shouldn't be messed with without a full filtered spray booth and a lot of instruction, not just grab it and go experience. The former is a floor finsih that will work in a pinch Minwax polyurethane has two drawbacks, It has a long dry time, even the quick dry, so dust and bugs like to find their way into it. It also has intercoat adhesion problems. The coats bond mechanically. You have to sand it with a coarse enough grit to leave microscopic scratches for the next coat to "grab" to. If you're worried about the yellowing of nitrocellulose lacquer you'll really hate polyurethane. It starts out a lot yellower and gets worse. Us senior citizens have an advantage in that I can look at stuff I did twenty five years ago and see what has happened. I hate everything I ever finished with conventional polyurethane. Polyurethane's big avantage over nitrocellulose is scratch resistance. This is important for floors, less important for guitars and furniture. They will both dent. because you're not denting the finish, usually, you're denting the wood underneath and the finish flexes and follows the dent. Get a copy of Bob Flexner's book on understanding wood finishing. It comes close to being gospel, is easy to read and available in paperback at a lot of Home Depot's and Lowe's in the do-it-yourself section.

I know that I haven't built or finished that many guitars but I spent a lot of years making a living finishing. Why doesn't anyone want to recommend useing semi-paste wood filler? Why do you all seem to want to use glue as a pore filler? If epoxy glue from Home Depot was a good alternative: 1) The geeks that make the stuff would repackage it and put it in the finish section at three times the price and call it "Two part wonder Filler"!! 2) The numerous woodworking magazines tht solicit articles from anyone who does this stuff would be resplendant with articles about this wonderful alternative product. They love this kind of stuff. Especially Fine Woodworking. Neither happens for a reason. Semi-paste woodfiller, which is a beast to work with, still is better and cheaper than the alternatives that seem to be touted here so soften. I hate doing high gloss no grain showing finishes. You haven't lived untill you've done a 48 square foot open grained mahogany table top for an **** retentive architect for an engineering firm. However, I can skin the living daylights out of a paying customer because so does every other finisher in the world. Maybe except for some obsessive-compusive wackos. Semi-paste can be tinted to any color by your local paint shop. It has good working open time and is simple to fix minor screwups. Benjamin Moore is not the worlds best, I think Behlen's is, but it's readily available and the stores that sell it 99.9% of the time can do quality color matching. This is just my opinion. And I know that I will probably get bashed here but I'm old and cranky and semi-masichistic. Hey I've been married for 32 years, what so you want? Fill, stain, seal, finish. Play. Simple

I use Behlen Solar lux for most everything. It should take you about a half hour to do the whole thing, dry ready to shoot. I'd start by staining it a medium brown. Something like a hickory. Sand it back a little. If it isn't dark enough use a darker brown, like American walnut. Hit it with thinned lemon yellow. Go over this with a very diluted brown until it kills enough of the yellow. Seal and shoot.

I build with 12 percent stuff all the time and haven't had any trouble with it other than my own mistakes. You do need to rough dimension the stuff and let it sit for a couple of days if you're using 6/4 or 8/4. You should do this with any thickness and any moisture content if you want to avoid problems anyhow. This lets any inconsitancies in dryness equilibrate. In some environments taking it down too low can cause problems. No finish keeps all of the moisture from moving in and out of a finished piece, be it guitar or chair. Where I live in Virginia our ambient humidity keeps air dried lumber from ever even approaching 6%. We run 80% and up almost all summer. Sort of like living in soup. But it's good for the complexion.

Derek, Get in touch with Onsrud. They are a great company for customer service. They may be able to sell you the motor that you need and if they can't they'll probably be able to steer you to someone who can. This is a lot more practical for what you're doing than that 2 ton gorilla you have been playing with. One of my old shop partners has a Onsrud CNC monster and it is absolutely unbelievable. I've used one similar to the one you just got and it is one of those tools that has nothing to improve. Simple, sweet and really well made. Oh, I have a phase inverter and I don't have it hooked up with 6 guage. I've had it in my current shop for five years or so and I haven't had any trouble. I had my electrician go over everything when we moved all the equipment around In June. No signs of overheating or other problems and I have a really fussy union electricain.

The only thing that small that I know of is a dental burr. They sell them by the pound at some of the woodworking tool sites. There are also a couple of companies that make reworked dental drills that work like routers to drive them. What are you doing that you need a router bit that small?

What piece of Godforsaken arcane antique crap have you stumbled onto this time? You need to establish a close personal relationship with an electric motor shop. Most places of any size have one. Aren't you near Detriot? Should be one in the yellow pages. Here in podunk Richmond we have Roy's Electric Motor Service which has been around so long that I think it started out as Roy's Water Wheel Service. It's full of old guys (even older than me) with grey Vitalised ducktail haircuts and they can either fix or find anything.

I will disagree with Drak only with fear and trepidation. Many years ago one of my college room mates was a commercial art major. He was a really good artist. Really really good.One afternoon he came home with a Pasche airbrush that he had bough used from a friend. He had never shot anything. I'd been shooting finishes for maybe three years at that point. Motorcycles and such. He had watched me do stuff a few times with clear and colored lacquers and a Binks No7 gun.. He locked himself in his room for about a week. Lived on coffee and pizza and didn't sleep and only came out to take a leak. At the end of it he was doing some amazing stuff. He was already a really good graphics artist and this was just another way of putting it on paper. It has a lot to do with your natural ability and your experience with tools in general. Shading and that kind of stuff isn't too hard. Actually painting pictures, etc with an airbrush is. I still can't do that kind of stuff worth anything. Just don't have the vision.

I've only tried this once and it worked. Wipe the stained wood down with Armor all. I used regular Deft over it . Had to use about four or five mist coats to get it to lay out right, but it worked. I got this tip from a friend who builds jewelry boxes. I used it on some hand mirror frames I made out of osage orange and purpleheart. They did darken over time, but not as badly as unprotected and it took maybe five years to really show. I don't know what kind of problems you'll get trying to do a larger surface like a guitar. I have read and heard stories of larger tabletop type jobs but I only have direct experience with small stuff. Can't hurt to try a test board.

I would stain after I grain filled. This way you don't mess up your color when you're taking off the excess. You also find where you didn't get the goo all the way off before you start the clear parts. I'm not sure I completely understand the allure of evpoxy as a grain filler. Especially if you're not doing a solid color. If you're doing a natural or stained wood finish I would think that regular semi-paste wood filler, which is specifically designed for this would be the beast of choice. I know some folks in over regulated environments have access problems. but that would be my only ecuse for using epoxy. The stuff sets up hard as a bowling ball and is the devil to sand.

Alg, I'd haul my butt over to my nearest Ronnie redneck auto finishing supplier and look at what they have to offer. There are a huge amount of trick finish products available today. The folks that work in these places generally know their stuff and can steer you to what will work best. Here in Richmond we have a place called Herald Sales. It's in a run down neighborhood in a run down building. I think they're on their third generation. The place is piled with test board and sample charts and when you tell them what you're trying to do they go dig into a pile and bring out something that " isn't what you asked for but would'nt this look really neat!" There have got to be a bunch of them in South Jersey. Look in your yellow pages, or google metalflake and see who the local ditributor is. They'll also probably sell everything else under the sun for trick painting.

Byron, Back in the 60's and maybe the early 70's Fender made a Telecaster that had a leather covering. I only ever actually saw and played one and it's been damn near 40 years ago, but I don't remember it being substantially different from a standard Telecaster. I seem to remember it being a "Frontier" model. The leather had a front back and side piece and was held together with leather wrap binding, and had western tooling on the face. I dopn't recall having seen one anywhere since and I don't think I've ever seen one on ebay, which is odd. Can't have made many of them. Hope this helps.

I've sprayed a couple of "Flake" bodies now, one for me and three for someone else with regular old lacquer "candy color' metalflake. The real small flake stuff. Two of 'em I used the little disposable Preval sprayers simply because I was shooting clear on a critical job and didn't want to spend the time cleaning and switching my regular spray rig. Two of 'em I used my standard HVLP setup, which is a Chinese knockoff of a Sata that I bought in a three gun kit for $99.99. This is nitrocellulose lacquer.It has been around since the '50's. It is not high tech high build touchy picky toxic etc etc, but it looks just fine. I know that I'll probably get blasted by the poly HOK Sata set here, but I'll put these up against anything that I've seen. I did have to do a fair amont of sanding/polishing to get a mirror finish, but a guitar is only about 4 square feet max. What's the big problem with rubbing out four square feet? The Candy Color stuff is available at any good automotive paint distributor. They have a website to steer you to one. The nice thing about the nitro type products is that they are so safe, relatively speaking (read the posts about things like explosion hazard and health warnings) that they will sell to most anyone. Tell the counter guy that "this is for Mr. Cash" and pay that way and you can usually get by not having a business. You can buy all of the fun rub out stuff at the same time. The stuff isn't cheap. A quart of flake base is about $70.00. Top color is about the same. Sometimes they'll discount the stuff. There are faster ways to do this but for someone who doesn't want to spend a bunch of money and who has time this will give you a very good result. One last thing. If you don't have much experience with spraying, you are probably going to have to do a lot of trial and error. This stuff is the deep end of the pool. Any flaws in technique no matter how you do it or what you use will show up like a sore thumb.

Unclej, To keep your jappaned oil form turning into a mass of goo get a can of nirtogen gas. A lot of the mail order suppliers to the furniture guys sell it. I can't remember the exact name but I think that Garrett Wade Co sells one in their finishes section. You shoot it in the can and immediately cap it and your finish will be there when the aliens are doing their archaeology. I'm not sure how much you're going to speed up your cure time with this treatment. You might look at some of the books and articles by Sam Maloof, Tage Frid and James Krenov. They are some of the deans of late 20th century contemporary furniture desing and construction and all shared a lack of interest in complicated finishing techniques. They all had a quick and dirty modified oil concoction that they used to avoid guns and long drawn out processes.

I'm going to second J. Pierce's idea. All you have to do is make a 90 degree fence and bolt it to the table. Stick some sandpaper down and you've got a jointer. This is really thin really soft wood we're dealing with here!! As long as you keep the pressure even and take your time you can save the trip to the shop. It's great that you have someone who can work with you, but in a pinch the "homemade sander jointer" will work just fine and give you an invisible seam. A general comment here. The guy I apprenticed to taught me right off the bat that the seam will look no better glued up than it does dry. If you have to clamp the bejeezus out of a joint to draw it up you are introducing a level of stress that may come back to bite you later. Glue also makes a lousey gap filler in the long run. Wood filler always looks like crap unless it's somewhere that you can't really see it.

I'm always amazed every time anyone in the UK starts talking tools. Taiwan, where the bulk of this stuff is made is no further from Liverpool than it is from Seattle. Why the heck doesn't someone over there start bringing in the equipment The we are drowning in over here? You all have access to the really high end stuff like Startrite and Wadkins but no mid range and smaller except for stuff that looks like homeowner grade. Are the import duties really that high? A Grizzly 14" bandsaw, which I'd rate as decent for the bucks, with a riser block is less tahn $500 US. I think that's about 250-260 in pounds. I would think that someone with a decent head for business could get a good market relatively quickly? What gives?

I'm surprized that they would punt the jointer first. I'd advise someone starting out to get the bandsaw first then the jointer then the planer or sander. I picked up a used 8" powermatic jointer for $500. It needed about $75 worth of parts and a half day of tweaking out. Grizzly sells a 14" bandsaw that is a decent tool for abaout $500 delivered with a setup riser. Performax runs specials on the 16-32 sander for about $800, sometimes less. A 12' benchtop planer goes for less than $500. Rigid and Dewalt consistently take the prize in reviews. I have a Jet which has a lot of design problems, but does a geat job on even difficult wood less than 12" wide. You haven't told us how you are set up for routers. By the time it's said and done you may wind up with more in routers total than any one stationary tool.