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For those of you who have used mango wood, how do you lay down a finish. I've tested a piece using MinWax Poly and it drinks it up. Coat after coat and I'm hardly getting a build. What do you guys or gals suggest?

I have a cute Golden Retriever puppy doggy named Mango. He's very thirsty too, drinks a lot of water all the time.
As far as YOUR Mango goes, sealing, grain filling, and sealig again would help. You would have to use a sealer compatible with your poly.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

I haven't used Mango, and I don't use MinWax Poly.......but, prime it with a coat of Zinsser seal coat and I suspect you'll be fine.

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If this is a completed guitar, I would not switch horses in the middle of the stream.
The answer is simply more finish.
Stick with it, carry on, keep going, ever onward!

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I agree.
That wipe on stuff goes on super thin.
Starts getting smooth at coat # 6.
Did you use a sealer?

You're right. I get the impression he was also wondering what the procedure was from start to finish for future projects as well.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

Thanks for the replies, guys. Yes, I've only tested this on scrap. The mango seemed similar to mahogany, which I've also finished without a sealer, so I put the poly on straight. Seeing that it didn't build quickly it did cross my mind to use a sealer. I thought I'd ask the question here first to see what others have done successfully with this wood without going through a lot of trial and error.

Again, thank you for your help. I will pick up some sealer today.

When all else failed, I used to shoot a coat or two of DuPont 1980S sealer.
It's like shrinkwrap in a can. Then I finished as per usual.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Mango is poreous in the extreme. I've had occasions when a vacuum would not hold a 1" thick piece because of the pores. I'm a nitro finisher, not an oil finisher, but I imagine it will be very difficult to get a flat finish with oil. You'd want a filled surface before you start. If you use a seale,. rather than a filler, you are just creating a lot more work down the road. That goes for nitro also. It's hard to used colored fillers on mango. They show. Superglue is fast and works very well. Good luck with your projects.

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You're right, Mango is porous and soaks up finish like a sponge. From raw wood, the procedure would be Seal, grain fill, seal again, then apply your finish. If you're using laquer, vinyl sealer works very well.
Once the wood is sealed and grain filled, you can also get a very nice finish with oil based polys.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

With mango and spalted woods, I flood with thin CA glue before starting any finishing. Things seem to go normally from then.

Dave F.

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"There goes Mister Tic-Tac out the back with some bric-brac from the knick-knack rack"

Darren, I built a j185 out of some stunning spalted mango over the winter. I sealed/stabilized it with thin CA, soaking in about 3 oz of the stuff. I used zpoxy to pore fill and left a thin layer on the surface. My Em6000 went over it like a champ. Yours may not be spalted, but regardless, mango is very porous, just look at some end grain. I resawed a nice non-spalted curly mango board into sets about a month ago and noticed that even the good stuff is porous.

Ken

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