I know this question has probably been asked before, so im sorry if im annoying you with it. I have finished a number of basses in the past few years with decent results. The only wood i've had great success with is maple cause it so closed grained. I've been looking to finish an ash body in a clear gloss, but i know it will be allot harder than any of the other stuff i have done.

What would you guys recommend a novice finisher should use to fill the grain on ash? I know you guys can offer all kinds of complicated advice about epoxy and shellacs and five step processes, but i'm definately not really good at finishing and i dont have access to pro equipment. If all i want to do is maybe buy one or two products for grain filling at the local woodcraft, what should i get? Is it a waste of time to try to get ash nicely finished in a clear gloss if i dont have pro equipment like HVLP? I would probly just get poly and spray it with those preval cans after i prepped the surface. But obviously the key is getting the surface completely smooth, i just dont see how it can be done with ash by someone without special equipment and allot of experience. can it be done by an idiot like me? thanks!

epoxy is not complicated and it's your best bet. I've used clear wood grain fillers which are recommended by the manufacturer of the finishing products I use, but I recently got in a bass that I delivered last year for some repairs and I was surprise to see what they call 'grain telegraphing' where the texture of the wood actually shows though all those layers of finish. This doesn't happen with epoxy since it doesn't shrink with time. Grain filling with epoxy is not more complicated than using dedicated wood fillers with the exception that you have to mix it before applying it and that you have to wait longer between sand/recoat sessions. Application is the same or easier because you have more working time.

and water based finishes like KTM-9 and the StewMac products work well over the top of the epoxy - yes?

all the best,

R

thanks rodent and wilser

Epoxy should be perfectly fine for the KTM-9. Once its cured, epoxy resins are chemically stable. Perhaps moreso than wood. But I'd fear the KTM-9 with any coloring or staining, because epoxy does not take a staining at all.

If you're painting your bass, epoxy the grain. If you're clear-coating with color in it, stay away from epoxy.

However...

...sometimes it's REALLY cool to let the grain of ash show even in a clearcoat. Kinda gives it a oiled-finish look, but much more durable.

Now, if you want to mix up the color with the KTM-9 stuff, then mix up a batch and use THAT as the grain filler. Just coat the bass, concentrating on the open grain lines, and give it all a gentle sand-down to level off the buildup. Two coats max should fill the grain. Then, do your finishing coats. And, the extra steps and extra sanding ensures a glass-flat finish once you start building up your layers.

I have two questions on this topic
When using the epoxy as a filler, how much should you squeegee off? I imagine that scraping the epoxy across and filling into the grain, whatever tool you use would pull some epoxy back out of the grain, and if you left more epoxy on the surface and didnt scrape it off closely, the surface would be a big PITA to sand back to finishing level when its dry.
Next thing, would epoxy be suited to dyed layers of lacquer to be clearcoated over to the final finish thickness? Lets say I was doing a translucent red, would I put a clear base coat over the raw filled wood, then the dyed color coats, then clear. Are you guys saying the dyed layer would not adhere to the epoxy grain filling?

ok, maybe a little off topic but how hard is it to do a clean line transparent color on the back and a clear finish on the top? I have thought about finishing the ash body of my bass with a trans cream finish and leaving the maple top with a clear poly.

+1 for epoxy, easy to use and no shrink-back.