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RaleighBG

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Everything posted by RaleighBG

  1. Honestly, it's what I have most of.... I usually shoot Nitro Lacquer in a ApolloHVLP gun so I've got Lacquer thinner stacked to the ceiling I started using it way back in the day and never tried anything different.
  2. so take a sample piece of wood and give this a try : Get some Transtint BLACK. fill a little mixing cup with about 4-5 oz of Lacquer thinner. Then add about 20-30 drops of Black transient to it. You want it BLACK BLACK BLACK. Stain the cedar till it looks like Ebony. Jet black. let it dry. get a sanding block with some 220 grit and sand it back till the natural cedar starts poking through again. Keep going a little further... The stain penetrates deeper into the grain so at some point you'll have it looking like just the grain is black. Now put your grey stain on. That will make that boring grey look amazing. if you really want to experiment, play with different colors for the pre stain. deep purples or reds. try stopping the initial sand back at different points. Stop before you think its ready on a test piece see what you get, Take it beyond where you initially think you should stop a time or two. Do a gradient sand.... like this PRS eagle grey finish :
  3. So glad you found the info on cobwebs. Its the Bain of a nitro finisher's existence and will flat out ruin a nice job. The Vinyl sealer is the absolute RIGHT thing to use first before shooting nitro. It is itself a nitro cellulose lacquer with some vinyl solids added in. It seals the wood and gives the subsequent coats of nitro a familiar surface to stick to. But remember it sits on the surface it doesn't really penetrate. I've found it also is the place to start a nice transparent color as well. It's fully tint compatible, so your transients or mixologist pigments can go right in. Just don't sand the wood too high or it will chip easy, and when it chips it will go all the way to natural wood. There's a million ways to skin a cat with finishing but I'd stick to the vinyl. If you run into a challenge where cutting the pressure to avoid cobwebs isn't enough pressure to move the material just thin it a tad. I use an HVLP gun and turbine from Apollo and it still cobwebs real easy. I usually have to go real thin coats at first with the vinyl. A little secret with the Belen's/Mohawk.... They make a secret sauce that the big brand custom shops use as a secret weapon. It's confusingly called Piano Lacquer. It's a special high build formulation of the same nitro finish as Classic Instrument Lacer you are likely already using, but it's designed to shoot thicker coats without the off gassing bubbles. If your looking for a DEEEEEEP THICK glass finish its just what the doctor ordered. I use JUST Piano Lacquer, but you could use it as your final clear coats instead. I can shoot a finish that looks like 10-12 coats in just 3-4.
  4. Diddly/McPhearson Jupiter Thunderbird Mahogany neck and Body Maple Top Ebony Fretboard custom machined brass covers and nut Curtis Novak HiLo custom pickups on a 6 position Freeway switch Bigsby B5 American Gold Gold Jumbo fret wire Inspired by JD McPhearson's Guitar player gear review video I set out to design and build the closest thing I could afford and source the parts for. This is my second guitar build and the first one I used CNC technology with. I needed to first build the model in Fusion 360 and it took a few months honestly. I was a 3D animation artist in the mid 90's so I was familiar with 3D in a roundabout way, but I needed so time to come up to speed with the CAM skills to path parts. The body tub is a single mahogany billet milled hollow, neck-through design like the original Diddly design with a StewMac dual action hot rod truss and carbon reinforcement. Very lightweight thanks to the hollow body. Bigsby B5 American tremolo, Gretsch NOS bridge and I had Curtis Novak custom make the pickups they are a custom-wound Hi LO wired into a 6 position Freeway switch so you can get that series and parallel pickup config for a vintage out-of-phase quack. The fretboard is custom inlaid with a 50's SciFi motif to complement the retro-modern design of the Jupiter. Steinberger tuners top it off with 40:1 ratio tuning. The basic dimensions are based on available Gretsch blueprints for the BillyBo with 24.75" neck scale from Electric Herald website with extensive deviations to make the hollow body work and sound right. The finish schedule is a tinted vinyl sealer coat to get the yellow, then 6 coats of Behlen/Mohawk Nitrocellulose Piano Lacquer applied with an Apollo HVLP system. 3 week cure with wet sand and buff. Pretty standard old-skool when it comes to finishing. Machined brass is also coated with Behlen Brass Lacquer to prevent it from going green and tarnishing .
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