Lacquer pulling Nitrocellulose

[fanlee]

Hi.

I have jsut done a rubout of which I am very proud.:D

I am basically a newbie doing 3 projects in parallel. On the other two I erred on the side of caution. I make no apology for this as the results are certainly better than acceptable. (Charlie a spray painter told ne that!!:D )

On this one I decided I would try to take another step and I can say that there is not the faintest suggestion of a pit in this finish.

The guitar has a slight carve in the top and I believe that I was able to get a good gloss with no rub throughs because I used the lacquer pulling technique described earlier in this forum by Durwood.

I 'bactracked' with 000 steel wool loaded with with UBeaut polish after using Meguair's No 2 on the pulled lacquer. Basically the No2 showed every pit there was & I then went after them with the steel wool and repeated the sequence to No 2 then steel wool until I couldn't find any more pits. Then I finished off with Megauir's No 9 & No 7.

I'm not sayning this was good or efficient, only that I avoided rub throughs on a shaped surface because the basis of the rubout was lacquer pulling rather than sand paper.

I used U Beaut water soluble dyes on Qld Maple, filled with timbermate sanded, restained, a layer of hard shellac, then sprayed nitro.

Here are the pics:

[DJ’s Timber]

You have done a great job.

What is the white strip?

[fanlee]

Plastic 'binding'.

It covers the glue join of the 'top' and the 'body'. It is mainly decorative on these types of guitars but on acoustics binding serves as a barrier to the entry of moisture via the end grain.

Thanks for your reply.

RobSm

[martrix]

Well done, it looks to be a pretty awesome finish, not to mention a brilliant job with the colour and burst.

Will be a valuable custom guitar when finished. Is it for yourself or will you sell it?

What is the method of sticking the white binding on?

[fanlee]

Thanks for your compliments.:o

DIY's almost by definition aren't worth much to anyone except the builder. That's OK by me as I intend to keep this and use it.

The colours & burst was fun. I followed a tutorial on the web by David Myka and also a book on mandolin building by Roger Siminoff. It was like finger painting.:D and with water soluble dyes changing things was no problem. The real beauty lies in the gorgeously figures piece of Qld Maple I lucked onto at my local timberyard.

The biniding....well I practised on scrap but will fess up. The results aren't good especially on the back which was my first attempt.

Basically the steps are : 1. Heat the binding strips and pre bend it. Hair dryers are recommended, but if I did this again I would simmer the binding in hot water as recommended by a more experienced uilder.

I did not pre bend it anywhere near enough, but I didn'r know at the time.

2. Glue on the binding 3 or 4 inches at a time. I used Weld on 16 and acryllic cement. It goes off very quickly and spurted from the new tube and on my first attempt on the back I got quite...er...unsettled with glue everywhere going off. It wasn't pretty.

For the top I used a binding paste made out of pieces ogf the binding itself dissolved in acetone. This is much better and I strongly recommend this method of adhesive to anyone especially beginners:D

3. Tape it down ie 'clamp' it after gluing. On the my first attempt my efforts here were inadequate again because I knew no better. I had to mount a number of rescue jobs which basically came off except one. The binding paste was helpful here too since it could be 'injected' down holes & cracks although a friend of mine tells me little plastic spheres are available from hobby shops & are easier to work with.

I corrected most mistakes when doing the top.

4. Trim it level with the sides & top. This is a horrible time consuming job for beginners. I used a scraper. There is a hot debate as to whether a flush trim power tool is a good idea. Some guys use them, but the consensus seemed to be that it was courting disaster, so I used the scraper. Maybe I should have sharpened many times more often.

The binding effort is the low point.:(

Also I think I had a slight warp in the body surface, titled the router at times and probably made a more mistakes as the channels aren't regular in depth all the way round.

I'm not in a hurry to do another binding job. The initial...er...distress with the weld On going off on everything probably set the tone for the whole process:mad: ...but I will make sure I do a better job next time!!:D

Thanks again.

RobSm