finishing a guitar body - where to start?

hi all
i have recently purchased an expensive guitar body made of american swamp ash. The body is raw unfortunately, and i am wondering now whatever posessed me not to buy a finshed one. Swamp ash I find out now is notoriously hard to finish as it has an open grain similar to mahogany. It takes a lot of filler to get it to the stage where a mirror finish is possible.

Who supplies stuff like clear grain filler and nitro lacquer on the east side of melbourne??

also is it possible to get a glasslike surface with a brush?
is spraying the only option?

i am a total woodcraft neophyte :confused:
thanks for any help, tips, resources you can give me

Is it just the body no neck, an electric is it?
I've seem some guitars come with what looks like no finishing, its flat with no shine but very smooth to the touch(silky)its because they are waxed, sometimes they have not been grain filled.
Depends on what the luether wants the sound to be, different finishes have different sounds on the same guitar!(acoustic guitars)
If its an acoustic, shellac(see the owner of this website!)can be used as a filler and get you a mirror shine with lots of work, dont put any soft paint finish as it dulls the sound some what.(muffles the body!)
If its a electric spraying with poly will be fine(2pak is better), grain fill with some clear epoxy then cut it back by going through a few grades of paper starting at about 120 through to 400 with aluminium oxide, then using wetrub 800 through to 1500-2000.
Thats what a freind does, they're like mirrors when hes finished.(before the paint is applied)

I made an electric out of brazilian Mahogany and I think I remember using a wax finish (can't remember the name) it is about 5 years old and still looks awesome the wax was easy to apply and the finish is hard wearing and you can re apply, although I haven't needed to...

I use nitrocellulose lacquer on harps. This has to be sprayed. I've tried the old spary, then sand back to a mirror finish, but it was so much work that I don't do it anymore. I put on a few coats to fill the grain, sand it back, then a couple more coats, and the last coat is pretty glossy anyway. You have to be very careful about build - don't put too many coats or nitro will crack. If you want a thick glossy finish, I think this is an epoxy finish, which I've not used. Also be very careful with nitro lacquers. Some of them, particularly the acid ones, are extrememly toxic. You DON'T want to breathe this stuff.

Wax and shellac are popular options for acoustics, but I've not used these. Wax gives a nice satin look - some people say it's high gloss, but I've never seen a wax finish that anywhere near glassy like a gloss nitro finish. Reno8ter, if you remember the name of the wax finish, I'd love to know what it was. I can find plenty of soft wax finishes in the stores, but no hard-wax finishes. I really want to try one out on my next harp.

Hi again,

I've just looked in my Carbatec catalog, and found a product called "Perfect Gloss". It's a 2-part epoxy resin, and it looks like THE STUFF! Epoxy resin is what you see at markets coating clocks with Elvis on them and things like that. It can be poured or brushed on, and self levels. It drips off the edge of your work, so I imagine you'd do the front, then polish back the drips, then turn it over to do the back, and polish off the drips again. (but yes, you will need to fill the open grain first)

Has anyone tried it out? Any comments on how easy it is to use? (particulary for something 3d like a guitar body?)

Durobond in sydney make a nitro guitar lacquer, you can email them and ask who their distributor is in melbourne.

You can pore fill with epoxy resin. I've just finished an acoustic where I've used shellac to fill the pores and finish, it was a pain in the *** to do. Never again! Perhaps it was my crap technique, but I'm buying a compressor and spray gear for the next one...

There's a ton of information at MIMF on all aspects of guitar building and finishing, if you register you'll be able to search the archives for everything you ever wanted to know.

hi and thanks to those who replied to my original post....since then i have done a lot of reading on various forums and groups on guitar building...i have pretty much decided to go for a glossy water based lacquer finish with either a solid colour or semi clear.....i understand now the teqniques of filling sanding and spraying spraying coats of sealer, solid culour or clear with dye and finishing up with a few coats of clear and ever finer grades of paper and then polish....in other words i know the steps roughly but have yet to follow them...so my next question is really about which products are the best and easiest to apply with a low powered spray gun.....i need recomendations for a grain filler that can be stained very dark, the stain to use, the sanding sealer, lacquer and a good strong green to dye the lacquer with...i am after like a tansparent british racing green ....the idea of the dark filler is to accentuate the grain in the apparently very open grained swamp ash.....any advice gratefully rec'd