Hey Folks,
Since Fender doesn't have a building or repair forum, I'm going to ask this here...

Ok...I'm in the middle of refinishing this body that I bought a couple of weeks ago (see my Body ID question for details there). I've got the body stained and the burst shot and I will be applying the clear coat tomorrow. While I was going thru my auto parts refinishing isle the other day picking up sand paper and rubbing compound and such, I noticed they had clear lacquer (actually it was the price that caught my attention...about $2 cheaper than I usually pay). To cut to the chase here, what the devil is the difference between "nitrocellulose" lacquer and "acrylic" lacquer? Obviously the chemical compounds that make up each are different, but how would this pertain to a guitar?

Now before someone says to just order some nitro from ReRanch, I am going to use the acrylic as I've used acrylic air brush paint to do the burst (and I know that the two will be compatible) but I am curious as to what the actual difference is. Thoughts?

Thanks,
Jim

nitro allows for the wood to breathe a little better. with fender nitro'd bodies, you still have the damn clear-coat under the nitro.

I take it you have not heard about the legend/dirty secret fender hid from the public in the 50s and 60s regarding "Fullerplast"?

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essentially Nitrocellulose is made from cotton. Nitro lacquer is easy to spray, leaves a hard, but flexible finish. Concurrent layers will melt, or burn in to the layers preceding. this if done right can eliminate a lot of sanding to control the orange peel effect from spraying, until the final clear coating is done.The downside is that it can take a long time to cure enough to buff,personally I think you wait a month before even checking if it is hard enough for a final wetsand, and buff/polish. the biggest downside to Nitro lacquer is how dangerous the solvent is. Nitrocellulose was originally referred to as gun cotton. It was used in place of black powder in muzzleloaders. The solvent is very toxic, flammable and unstable. it is illegal to ship by air, and cross border shipping is hard to say the least.

Acrylic Lacquer is really a thermoplastic. it is marginally safer than NC lacquer. Though it is still toxic. The biggest advantage of acrylic lacquer over NC lacquer is its much faster drying time. The biggest downside is that layers do not burn in to prior layers like Nitrocellulose does. This can mean, if you don't have almost perfect atomization, you will need to sand orange peel even on middle and colour coat layers. If you don't keep a close control on your orange peel all the way through the project you can end up anding through all your coats and not knock the peel flat.

it has been largely replaced as an automotive finish (and by many guitar companies,) by modern polyurethane and/or polyester finishes. these finishes require hardeners and other catalysts. they are extremely dangerous to spray. Poly finishes you get at home depot are very unlike the polys these companies use. i wouldn't recommend them for anything.

You are right to stick with a single solvent type for all the steps of your finish. Incompatibilities can cause all kinds of reactions. Some are probably toxic, but there have been many a finish that has wrinkled up, or even curdeled due to mixing the wrong stuff.

Hope this helps

Nitro gasses off and shrinks. Clear coat under surface isn't the problem, even on old lacquer finishes you have a clear coat. Fullerplast is a synthetic sealer, not really just a clear coat, untinted Nitro is also a clear coat.

Personally I think this argument is largely myth. To me the biggest problem with poly finishes is the fact that they are usually applied very thickly. In fact i don't think i could tell the difference sonically between a thin poly coated instrument and a thinly coated nitro instrument.

Fender never went to any lengths to hide its use of fullerplast. Most companies don't make a point of listing every single ingredient of their finishes in the advertising copy. The anti fullerplast ranting arose during the hysteria of the anti-CBS movement. Several experts have cited examples of Telecasters as far back as 57 having fullerplast as the sealer, and jazzmasters in 59. It probably wasn't until 64 that fender started using fullerplast as its sealer on all models. When Leo ownerd the company he bought his finishing supplies from many different sources, including traveling salesmen.Models from the same production year could have finshes made from supplies from different companies, and the compositions of those materials could be a lot different. CBS being more corporate probably used a more modern method of contracting supplies.

Edit: Oh yeah, and although 'water white nitrocellulose (not water based lacquer, just a reference to its clarity,) is resistant to yellowing, another plus(maybe,) to acrylic lacquer is that it is way less photo reactive, meaning white guitars stay white, and blue guitars don't turn green. Of coarse if you want that effect, you can always tint your clear coats with some amber and/or brown.

sorry about the novella.

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I'm not an expert, but I play one on the internet.

well, I don't think anyone will be able to top Twelvebar's reply, but here's an interesting link that was originally posted elsewhere on the board (sorry I can't remember the original thread, but it was probably one of the projects):

http://www.provide.net/~cfh/fenderc.html

Dude...thank you for taking the time to write that...yes, it does help!




Absolutely no need to apologize at all! I'm a detail guy myself and I -much- prefer an answer such as this to someone would would say something like "it's paint". Again thank you and I am grateful!



I had read a book once about Leo Fender...I think it was written by George Fullerton and I remember that there were issues in regards to how they had applied the finishes in Fender's early days. I don't remember that specific product being mentioned as much as something to the effect of "bubbling vats of the highly volatile toxic chemicals they used to dip the guitar bodies in"...or something to that general effect. I don't really remember this being mentioned as a "dirty little secret" as much as simply the way things were done back then. I had a friend years ago who worked for the Sherwin-Williams plant near downtown Cleveland and he once told me that SW can't actually afford to close that plant even though the facility is so out of date because the environmental cleanup from the chemicals and the way the used to mix the paints and such would put the company right out of business. That said, I seriously doubt that Fender was trying to deliberately hide this from the public as much as that's simply how things were done back in those days. As Twelvebar said, Fender as well as most guitar companies have never really made a point of listing all the chemicals and such that go into their products...to most people it would be highly irrelevant. However just because they never made a point of it doesn't mean it's some kind of "cover up" either...people tend to take that kind of info and turn it into something it's not.



Thank you for the link...good info to compliment Twelvebar's post.

Hi lomitus: I doubt those vats would be bubbling, but that'll be the stain that's being refered to.

Staining guitar bodies prior to the rest of the finishing is very skilled and an area where things can go expensively wrong, given that it can be almost impossible to correct bad staining errors - such as lap marks.

Fender's mass production solution was to simply dip the guitar body into a tub of stain, giving a speedy, even application with less skill required and minimal chance of mistakes.

Mind you, I'd be fascinated to turn out to be wrong on the bubbling bit - perhaps those vats had to be heated like witches' caldrons for some reason...!

Cheers - C

PS: good post by Twelvebar, above...