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Post subject: Polyurethane, nitro, laquer, none of the above?
Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2008 11:32 am
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Hi Everybody,

Just wondering...I'm thinking of creating my own sunburst finish on an ash body. I'm hearing about a multitude of ways of staining and finishing. What are some of the options, and the advantages and disadvantages of each? Is there a clearly preferred method?

Thanks.


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Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2008 12:55 pm
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Nitro is not as durable nor is it as shiny, but it lets the wood breathe and age more naturally for enhanced tonality over time.

Poly finishes can be buffed to "uber-shinyness" and provides better durability. The wood can't breathe and so the tone doesn't improve all that much with age.

Have fun


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Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2008 7:48 am
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Oh, man, talk about a vast subject! There just ain't room to say it all here: so for a starting place you can hardly do better than the chapter on finishing in the Guitar Player Repair Guide. That'll get you a long way down the road.

If you still want more, there's Guitar Finishing Step-By-Step, by Don MacRostie and Dan Erlewine. But I strongly recommend against starting with that one; it really would be too much information too soon, in a way that would merely leave you confused.

A thought on materials: putting aside things like oil finishes and other strange exoticisms, there's essentially four routes that mainstream makers go. Nitrocellulose is the tradition-approved top end finish. Polyurethane is these days used on most factory-made MIA Fenders. It's excellent. Polyester is found on the majority of MIM bodies. And so-called "waterbase" is the coming thing. That covers some complexities that we won't get into here, but if I was starting out that last is the route I'd go, for a row of reasons. If you are in the States then Stewart-MacDonald has an excellent range of waterbase products for guitar finishing.

Far as finishing your first guitar body or two goes, though. You don't want to spend a stack of cash on expensive spraying gear, compressors etc, till you know it is what you are into.

So two options. Nitrocellulose is available in aerosols for guitar finishing from a number of sources, and with a bit of elbow-work on the buffing can give you professional results. Alternatively, go into your local automotive supplier and pick up aerosols of car paint. With the body prepared correctly (see the books) and with a nice clearcoat from the same source you can get perfectly satisfying results with that type of finish. Let's not get into the complex discussions over car paint on guitar bodies: for getting started it is a fine way to go.

Helpful hint: I'd do a few solid colors first before starting to think about transparent finishes, wood stains and all that. Walk before you can run.

Best of luck - C


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Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2008 2:12 pm
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mthorn00 wrote:
Nitro is not as durable nor is it as shiny, but it lets the wood breathe and age more naturally for enhanced tonality over time.

Poly finishes can be buffed to "uber-shinyness" and provides better durability. The wood can't breathe and so the tone doesn't improve all that much with age.

Have fun


And on the other and we have lacquer finish. A natural finish that lets the wood breathe and give a better tone. Although, the guitar is more vulnerable to sudeen humidity and temperature changes

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Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2008 4:35 pm
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Nitro finish is very flimsy and not very durable, nor is it glossy, but it does improve the guitar's finish over time, which is a HUGE plus. Also, if you like a flat finish instead of a glossy finish, that's a plus too, right? :D

The polyester or polyurethane finish is very glossy and very hard, so its very durable and gives quite a striking appearance to a guitar. Yet its so thick it doesn't let the guitar's wood breathe much. But hey, at least it'll still age sorta-kinda.


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Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2008 5:29 pm
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Rocker_Gamma wrote:
The polyester or polyurethane finish is very glossy and very hard, so its very durable and gives quite a striking appearance to a guitar. Yet its so thick it doesn't let the guitar's wood breathe much. But hey, at least it'll still age sorta-kinda.


Polyester or polyurethane finishes do not have to be Thick.

They got such a bad rep because of the "Thick Skin" finishes of the '70s. Fender actually used that term to describe their new, indestructible finishes. Compared to the fragile lacquer finishes of the previous decades, that were then viewed as a bad thing, it must have seemed to have been a good idea!

Fender's water-based finish experiments of the late '70s were disasters!

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Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2008 6:14 pm
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Here is a good web page to read about finishes
http://www.edroman.com/techarticles/polyvsnitro.htm

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Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2008 8:21 pm
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A friend of mine owns his own paint shop (automobiles) and we have been getting into some re-finishing guitars here lately - we had a blast with the nitro and relic'ing the guitar by cracking the finish and all that

Anyway, not to get off topic - check out

www.reranch.com

They have the old Fender colors and nitro aerosol cans that was mentioned in an earlier post -- I was impressed with their colors - I believe they even touch on sunburst finishes

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Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2008 8:46 pm
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At one time Fender made a couple hundred guitars with what they called a marble finish were they took a white primer coated guitar and dipped it into an oil based finish that was floating on top water then they put a top coat of clear poly over it. 1984 Bowling Ball Strats.

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Posted: Sat Sep 27, 2008 9:04 am
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Here's what Warmoth says about its choice of finishing material:

Quote:
Urethane is our primary finishing material though we do use several thin coats of polyester as a base coat to fill the wood grain. The process is first to fill the grain, then the color coat is applied. Finally the top coats are laid down before final sanding and buffing. If the body is dyed, these colors are put on the raw wood prior to the base coat application. There seems to be much controversy about finishing materials and poly seems much maligned… Without sinking into the depths of this debate, let us just say that our finishes seldom exceed twelve thousandths on an inch in thickness. For the lacquer fans, there are others that spray this material though the cost is generally at least double for a very questionable sonic difference.


As for old nitro finishes allowing the wood to "breath," read about the Fullerplast grain filler here: http://www.provide.net/~cfh/fenderc.html

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Posted: Sat Sep 27, 2008 11:20 am
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cvilleira wrote:
At one time Fender made a couple hundred guitars with what they called a marble finish were they took a white primer coated guitar and dipped it into an oil based finish that was floating on top water then they put a top coat of clear poly over it. 1984 Bowling Ball Strats.

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Posted: Sat Sep 27, 2008 12:06 pm
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I wish I could have watched them turn a bowling ball into a guitar body!

That had to have been something to see.

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Posted: Sat Sep 27, 2008 2:32 pm
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For me it's nitro. I'll avoid the this finish vs. that finish arguments. They can get deep.

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Posted: Sat Sep 27, 2008 4:23 pm
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orvilleowner wrote:
Polyester or polyurethane finishes do not have to be Thick.

They got such a bad rep because of the "Thick Skin" finishes of the '70s. Fender actually used that term to describe their new, indestructible finishes. Compared to the fragile lacquer finishes of the previous decades, that were then viewed as a bad thing, it must have seemed to have been a good idea!

Fender's water-based finish experiments of the late '70s were disasters!


Right. Fender have got much better at applying finishes not so thickly - lower cost in paint, after all. Though polyester tends to go on just intrinsically thicker than polyurethane, which is suggestive as to why they use urethane on necks, even on polyester bodied MIMs.

Polyurethane can be put on as thinly as nitrocellulose, if you choose (as the quote from Warmoth indicates).

I believe I've heard about waterbase problems in the '70s, too. However, that word covers a multitude of possible meanings, and things have progressed vastly as far as the latest waterbase instrument finishes are concerned. Penny-to-a-pound we'll see a lot more "waterbase" finishes from big manufacturers sooner than later - whatever they individually mean by the term.

I have read a guitar magazine journalist or two claiming that Martin are already using water finishes on some of their top end range. But I have searched for confirmation of that without success. Martin's own website is remarkably cagey on the subject of finish altogether.

One of the things that always makes this subject so problematic whenever it comes up is precise definitions of terms. People use words such as "poly", "lacquer" and such with a carefree abandon which no doubt helps a lot of the mythology to get perpetuated...

Cheers - C


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Posted: Sat Sep 27, 2008 4:49 pm
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cvilleira wrote:
Here is a good web page to read about finishes
http://www.edroman.com/techarticles/polyvsnitro.htm


I shouldn't, but I can't stop myself...

There's a fair bit on that Ed Roman page that needs to be taken with a goodly pinch of salt. What he has to say about fillers is just plain small-spherical-objects, for instance: a beginner would go badly wrong if they paid attention to that.

Nobody uses filler on maple caps, especially not PRS (who he has a bizarre down on) - why would they? On the other hand, everyone uses it on ash, rosewood and mahogany, because you'd simply waste gallons of finish doing exactly the same job of pore filling otherwise. Never come across anyone else thinking it has a deleterious affect on tone.

Here's a page from Jol Dantzig's workshop blog at Hamer. Mr Dantzig is arguably the finest electric guitar builder on the planet (that's my argument, anyway) and his finishing is second to none. Even Ed Roman says so! The first large picture shows filler being applied to a body of, in this case, limba: the caption explains what is going on -

http://guitarguru.typepad.com/my_weblog ... -a-pl.html

Ed Roman himself says that if you read what he's written "you may come away with some incorrect assumptions". Pay attention to that bit, at any rate!

Cheers - C


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