Double Bass Varnish Touch Up

[CaseyVancouver]

My carved Chandler 'Busan' copy has dark oil varnish. The lower top edge had some rash leaving white spruce showing and the hardwood bumpers had rash. I went to a large art supply store and matched up a Faber-Castell artist pen to the chocolate colour. After getting the colour on I coated the areas with finger nail top coat by Vitry. My wife is in the cosmetic buisiness and made sure I picked a tough one. The end result is good, been on for a year and I'm happy with it.

The second honey coloured bass is also carved and is my gigging work bass. I have played this bass since 1974 and it has done many thousands of gigs, as you can see by the varnish

Sidney Orpwood put the original light colour oil varnish on it and spent many hours french polishing. He was very proud of how it looked. It looked perfect for about 10 years then started to get cold checking and chips from gigging. You can see why I generally never take the perfect Chandler, my other bass, out of the house.

Hoping to copy the results of the Chandler fix I went to the art store and got a couple of matching art pens. Trying it on the honey coloured bass nothing matched and looked acceptable. The chips in the finish, although some are over 40 years old, looked like white raw wood. My solution, until a luthier can do things properly, is linseed oil. The linseed oil does a great job of making the white raw wood look kinda old.

The first two pictures is the dark Chandler bass before & after touch ups. The honey colour bass looks better after getting hit with linseed oil, it looked a lot worse untouched.

The last photo is the art pen, linseed oil and nail coat. The hide glue was for a small repair.

My conclusion is if you have a dark bass the art pen can work great. Not so for a honey coloured bass. The linseed oil makes the raw wood damage look a bit better though.

Of course a luthier should do a good match on the honey bass.

 

[David Potts]

Another trick for hiding scratches in pale amber varnish is to half peel an almond and rub the exposed nut across the scratch.

 

[CaseyVancouver]

Here is another picture of the Chandler top after about a year since the touch up.

 

[LouisF]

Old English furniture polish - comes in light and dark versions

 

[james condino]

Doesn't Peter's bass building book have a chapter on his varnish formula and method?

 

[bassmanbrent]

Hi Casey! Nice to see my old bass again. I miss it! BTW, not that it matters at all, but the bumpers were made and installed by Gerard and are leather - not hardwood.

Hope you're enjoying the bass!

 

[powerbass]

I recently did a edge chip repair on my bass. I purchased a small amount of shellac, button lac actually which is one of the darkest in color. I was able to build up the finish and match the color pretty well. BUTTON SHELLAC Selection | Page 1 of 1

 

[Ben B]

I've used dark colored button shellac for refinishing a DB, but it didn't come out nearly as dark as your bass, and the grain didn't result in those dark, almost black areas. It's possible that a very dark tint was added to the original shellac. However, I suspect something else happened. I don't have a lot of experience refinishing DBs, but I have many years experience finishing wood furniture and household moldings. Based on how the grain looks, IMHO, your bass was stained before the finish was applied.

I think the best way to blend the scratches would be to first wipe on some fairly dark brown stain, then finish with some amber shellac.

 

[Matthew Tucker]

As long as scratches are touched up a shade darker than the main finish, they will probably look just fine. Lighter, they just look naff.