Official Luthiers Forum!

I expect more are trying this finish & would love to hear any/all opinions, pitfalls, cautions or whatever from those who've used it.
Thanks

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Dave
Milton, ON

The best thing to do is give Rolfe Gerhardt a call and see where's he's at with it, and also Tom Bozzolo.

http://www.phoenixmandolins.com/
http://www.bazzolo.com/

These guys were completely sold on it a few years back. They've been using it the longest on instruments from what I know.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

I just ordered a gallon. I do hope it works out.

Hopefully someone will post how to use it and what they think of the finish here.

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

Guess not Joe..... thought more would have tried it by now.
I downloaded Rolfes "an overlooked finish" article...lots of good info there but was hoping others might also have insights. I'm fairly comfortable with USL/EM6000 now & was paricularly interested in the differences. Keep us posted on how yours works out.

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Dave
Milton, ON

I can tell you a bit anyhow, I've just done a few more with it. But I'm no expert. I've done between 8-12 with it but I don't recall exactly. I keep giving up because my skills/equipment lack. Then after a break, I try again out of stubbornness, just cause I don't like farming out the finish. Although, from a cost/benefit perspective it's probably the smarter thing to do...

So this round I used a little Rockler turbine to spray. I sprayed undiluted. The surface was definitely rough and pebbly, and took a lot of sanding to get flat. I did 8 coats day one, 8 day two, waiting 25-30 minutes between coats. Took about 30$ worth of 30 mic paper to level it between days, which was definitely unusual from other attempts. I don't think the rocker unit is really that great for it, I could only get a 1" spray pattern happening, and it did not atomize properly. It sprayed shellac well though....

The reason I sprayed undiluted was because the little witness line artifacts that Rolfe mentions did not disappear completely with buffing this time. It was very pronounced, so much so that I had to strip and start over, a real pita for sure, especially as now I believe my top is a bit too thin, so I have a feeling this guitar is basically a write off. It's been in the finishing stage for over two months now...

Anyhow, this time I used my own flake made dew axed shellac as a sealer over the epoxy pore fill. No adhesion issues at all this time, but I definitely put a good solid layer on, and I think it worked fine. On the last guitars using Zinsser, I could peel the finish up like a sticker, not so this time.

It buffed up real nice though, except that if you look very carefully you can still see evidence of the witness line artifacts. You really gotta look though, and this has never happened before.
I have a few thoughts about this. One, I think I should have waited longer between coats. Two, I think the rockler turbine was drying the paint a bit before hitting the guitar, though I speculate about that. Lastly, although it was a brand new can that I opened, I just found the shipping receipt and it had been sitting around for a year and a half before I got to it, and I don't know about it's shelf life...

Another concern to me is that it doesn't ever fully harden. You can pick the stuff off the lid used to cover the sound hole and bend it a wiggle it without breaking it. Which makes me wonder how much it dampens the top. There is definitely a before/after finish change in the resonance, but I find the same with UV poly. Is it better to have a flexible finish to let the top move more freely (SV), or a glass hard finish like the UV? I don't know.

So, it doesn't sound like I'm selling it all that well, but I do believe that all the difficulties I'm having are due to lack of experience and wrong equipment, and not a deficiency of the product itself. It definitely buffs out nicer than the KTM-9. I've never tried EM 6000. The experience of people's hands melting the KTM-9 turned me off acrylics forever...

All that being said, I like this stuff. Get yourself a quart and give it a whirl, you may find that your experience goes better than mine, depending on your skills/gear...I know I am going to keep plugging away at it.

I used KTM-SV on one guitar 2 years ago and it still looks good. I spayed it on undiluted. I was able to spray on smooth coats, which is important as you really want only the last coat to be on top of the guitar. Before spraying it on I tried to brush it on but could not get an even enough coat. I did have one small area on the side of the guitar that I sanded though the last coat. It mostly went away when I buffed out the finish. One has to rock the guitar in the right light to see the witness lines. All and all I was very happy with the finish. I ended up switching to EM6000 for a water base finish because it way more forgiving.

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http://www.Harvestmoonguitars.com

May I ask what you used to spray it with?

Sure, I used an Earlex Spray Station 5500 HVLP. I switched the 2.0 needle to a 1.5 fine needle.

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http://www.Harvestmoonguitars.com

Thanks guys.....just the kind of candid replys I was hoping for.

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Dave
Milton, ON

On the Earlex, can you adjust the spray pattern width, and the air pressure? On the rockler, all you can adjust is the fluid volume, and whether the spray pattern is vertical or horizontal...