Lacquer pulling Nitrocellulose

[fanlee]

Hi.

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

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!! )

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.

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. 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

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!!

Thanks again.

RobSm