Never thought the finish process would kick my a$$ quite like this. All of my finish experience is with polyurathane. Never had a problem. On my guitar I decided to try my hand at spraying and for some reason I went with Stew-Macs water based sealer/lacquer. The stuff went on well but seems to have a problem sticking properly to the fretboard edge, which is ebony. I believe it has to do with the oils in ebony. I've had to repair the finish in a couple of places and I can easily see where I did this. Of all the things I read, I never came across anything that would have led me to believe I had to prepare the ebony in any special way. Am I wrong on this?
At this point I'm considering sanding the whole thing down and using poly. My concerns with that is the compatibility with the waterbased grain fill that I used, also the possibility of not getting all of the wb finish off somewhere which may cause an issue when I put the poly on. Oh, and sanding down the top which was stained and F'n that up.
This is my first build(still ). My old lady keeps reminding me of that, and not to beat myself up. Thing is, it has turned out way better than I thought it would. If it were ragged looking I'd be more inclined to let it be and start playing the thing. But since it has come out so close to perfect, I feel I need to get it right. Wish I could tell how well it will actually play before killin' myself. Any comments are appreciated.