Show and tell: finishes

[Means2nEnd]

I love seeing zombie threads get lit up again and seeing who used to be involved here and how things have progressed over the years.

As far as the stabilized tops Alpher Instruments uses they are for sale in the $600 range. I recently was in the Guitar and Bass Expo in Reading PA and my booth was across from a small guitar builder from MD who had figured out how to do the buckeye and other spalts in the same way. It's pretty involved but rather than pay $600+ he did a ton of research and development that involved getting the wood down to 0% moisture where he bakes the wood for 24 hours at 200 degrees first and uses Cactus Juice stabilizing products with dye. First he only soaks the top or fingerboard in the dyed Cactus Juice to partially dye in the most porous and softest parts of the wood with say light blue then in a custom vacuum chamber with more Cactus Juice with say a purple he dyes the top again under vacuum and then bakes it to harden and cure the wood. He has several tops and veneers for sale at the show and I have his contact info if anyone may be interested where his stuff is awesome as well and more in the $200 range but he hasn't done ¼" pieces yet and that's what I'm into but he is doing them shortly.

A more detailed and better explanation from the builder himself is here...


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[tjclem]

Well, you don't have to use a "sealer". You can do the whole finish in clear polyurethane, if you want. The thing is, ash and spalted maple both have deep grain and will soak in a lot of finish. If you want a high gloss finish, you're going to have to spray on and sand back a bunch of coats of something to fill up the grain up to the surface. Automotive polyurethane will work fine for that purpose, because you can lay it on thick. Spray on a couple of coats, sand it back, spray on a couple more, repeat, until the grain is filled and you have a smooth surface. Then, clean it all up and spray on your top clear coats.

You can use almost anything for those base coats, as long as it's compatible with the polyurethane. The safest thing is to stick with polyurethane. Generally, automotive polyurethane will stick to any other polyurethane with no problem. You could get a can of brush-on polyurethane and use that for the filling and sanding.

Don't try to spray polyurethane over top of nitro lacquer, or acrylic enamel.

Now, a common technique is to add some color to those filler coats, to make the grain of the wood pop out. You can do that with the automotive polyurethane, adding some brown or black to it.

sounds good boss. I am having a local car guy do one for me. I am giving him a scrap piece all sanded up so he can experiment with it.

 

[JIO]

This is the 3rd (intentionally low-tech retro) finish using similar rattle-can products/process with a 4th in progress. Here's the breakdown for this one: Ace Premium Red Oxide Primer (base) - Krylon Glitter Blast (golden glow) dusting and sealed with StewMac satin nitro clear. It has a fine satiny textured "feel" which is very nice to touch and is holding up well. A very controllable DIY finish. I've done others using Krylon Dual Superbond (satin) paint+primer as a base coat. All of these products were bought at my local Ace hardware store except for the StewMac nitro clear.