Official Luthiers Forum!

So I can get some 2k finishes, but was wondering what kind of safety kit is required to spray them? I have a 3M respirator that works very well for nitro but was wondering is the same kit enough for 2K or do I need a full hazmat suit and a decontamination shower afterward?

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Tai Fu, the respirator is the absolute most important tool if you are spraying 2 component finish. If it is 2k all of it will have Isocyanates, and speaking from experience you want to protect your lungs. The dual charcoal filter mask is minimum but keep in mind the filters are only good for 40 hours of air exposure. After that, it is almost like not having a mask on as far as keeping your lungs healthy.

All that said, they are a very forgiving product to use. I personally use ( not guitar related ) automotive clear coat that at 70F
is ready to wet sand and buff in 15-20 minutes! I cannot tell you how this changed my finishing schedule! I will be using the same material on electric guitar bodies. I don't know if I could get it thin enough to do an acoustic, but I assure you I will try at least one finished with lacquer and recorded, then strippen and refinished with the 2k and recorded for a comparison. I just want to know!

I also highly recommend a tyvek suit and gloves if possible as this will keep your clothes from becoming contaminated with the vapors, and they do not smell good.

Best option is a fresh forced air mask that has positive air pressure and is full face coverage in conjunction with the suit!

Mike

What I was wondering is, is 2k bad for you if you get it on your skin? My main concern is keeping the gun clean and functional after I'm done because I know if you don't clean your gun thoroughly you will ruin it. For nitro lacquer I just spray the clear, and after I'm done I run lacquer thinner through the gun without the air and it keeps it reasonably clean. Can't do that with 2K...

Can 2K be used over normal nitro lacquer color coat, or do I need the same 2K color coat as well?

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Mike hit the key safety points. Really don't want to get it on your skin either, lot's of nasty chemistry in there. It can be put down plenty thin for an acoustic, in fact it has a mil barrier of 5 mils (at least the type I use) which cannot be crossed. Thicker films will develop problems after some time like checking and peeling. You cannot put it down over a lacquer color coat, you must use the compatible undercoats. I use PPG DCU2021 clear and their DBU for colors under it. Gun must be emptied, completely broke down and cleaned before the timer on spray mix pot life is up or the gun will likely be junk.

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

I worked as a auto painter from the mid 60's until the mid 80's. I decided to leave the profession and go to art college. One of the deciding factors for me was the introduction of 2K paints. Most of the shops were requiring us to use it and although it produces a beautiful and very tough finish it is toxic. If you want to experiment with it I highly suggest you use a painters suit and a face mask that pumps clean air in from the outside. When I saw we had to wear a haz-mat suit with an air supply I decided it was time to find a new profession.

I also suggest you do not try to paint in your house or basement. If you don't already have a spray booth then you need to make one that had good air exchange and exhausts outside. The overspray is not only toxic it will stick to everything so make sure you are not exhausting it to the neighbors car or anything it will sick to.

I personally will never use it again. I have done a number of paint jobs using it and it does create a beautiful water wet glossy finish that is hard as nails but the toxic part of it is what scares me. I was one of the painters that always wore a mask for everything I did not matter how small of job it was. I am 60 years old and I ride mountain bike and can do a 30 mile run with ease. I owe that to being very careful for the 20 years I painted cars and leaving when I saw there was a serious danger in using the "new" finishes.

So if you do try it take extra precautions to make sure you are safe and do not breath that stuff in. Even the vapors coming off it while it is drying are toxic. Once you smell it you will understand what I am talking about.

Bob

The only reason I'm interested is because I wanted to use glitters, and I heard you have to use 2K with glitters since nitro can't build enough to cover them. However if 2K can't exceed 5 mils without problem (same as nitro) then it doesn't look like 2k gives much of an advantage either.

I want to know is it possible to do glitters with nitro?? I'm not too sure about using 2K because it looks like it's going to take a lot more to incorporate a spray booth into my shop.

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Yes Sir, I use to do metal flake with lacquer but it takes at least 30 coats of clear to bury it. It works like this:

Lets say you want a deep blue metal flake with purple undertones.

Base coat:
A couple coats of red.

Metal flake layer:
About 3 or 4 coats of clear mixed with metal flake, a couple of large ball bearings in your cut to keep the flake suspended (roll the bearings around in the cup as you spray). Put enough coats on until you get the desired color of red showing through. (the flake is silver).
Next spray about 20 coats of clear, block sanding after about 10 coats to start leveling the finish over the flake. After that I would spray about 2 or 3 coats, let it dry for a few days and block sand it out. Repeat until you have a smooth finish.

Candy color:
Then mix up some candy blue with clear and start laying on coats. Usually 3 or 4 will be sufficient to get a nice deep color. Let it all dry for a few weeks and come back and start laying clear over it. I would do 3 or 4 coats and let it dry for a week and come back and wet sand it and put the final 2 or 3 coats of clear on and give it another 2 or 3 weeks to dry and then wet sand and buff out.

If you are going to do this over wood then I would suggest you use a polyester primer such as Feather Fill which is a little like spray on Bondo. That will help stabilize the wood from moving too much and cracking the finish.

The real problem with flake is that it will be all over everything and you really have to isolate where you spray it. Early on in my painting career I made the big mistake of spraying it out in the shop. The next day no one could paint anything because there was flake all over everything in every part of the shop. I spend the next few nights cleaning the entire shop and hosing down everything including the walls and ceiling.... Bad move on my part...

I would suggest not using flake if you don't have to and if it is a client that is requesting it then make sure you charge about 5 times what you think it is worth and DO NOT guarantee your work that it will not crack. There are a lot of other very cool custom finishes that are much easier to do and don't require as many coats.

Of course you could do it the way a lot of "painters" do and only put a few coats of clear on and leave the finish all lumpy but that only looks good from 90 feet away. And old saying we use to use is "90 feet in the moonlight and it will look great"

You can do some really cool looking finishes with pearl. Pretty much the same technique but minus about 20 coats and hours of wet sanding. Pearl looks like miniature metal flake but has some really cool redish/blueis/greenish cast to it. Put a candy clolor over it and it does some really cool things under lights.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Bob

I had a customer come back and ask if I could do flakes, and I basically charged a bunch over what I normally charge for refinishing and he passed it. The 2K stuff sounds about as bad as spraying Sarin gas or something, and if it's that bad I don't want it in the shop. I can get clear polyester but I do not think it's thin enough for spraying and I am not even sure how hazardous spraying polyester is. I love working with pearls and chameleon powders but due to its expense (the customer also asked about it) it was still expensive to do. In the end he just decided to stick to the original plan (which is to do a solid color)

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

2K can be safe if you use the correct precautions and you can't get much more of a durable finish. But I won't spray it.

Flake is a cool finish but it is just time intensive to do it right but it isn't that durable, and if you have to repair it... well you can't.... It is a complete refinish or nothing.

Bob

I suppose there could be more than one system of 2K. I do not know if there is a system based on epoxy; but, I am so allergic to epoxy that I would not want to find out. In my case, if I absorb even a small amount on skin I get a systemic reaction. I have never tried using large amounts, such as for laminating sides, so I do not know if the fumes alone could get me. So far, I have not reacted to fiberglass type resins or Bondo, but I will never be spraying any two part system to find out.

For your glitter, you might want to check around and find someone who does that for automobile body finishing. If you approach someone right and they are willing, they would probably do it quite cheaply and do a lot better job than you would on your first attempts. A friend did that for me on a solid body I did for my son years ago.

For Tia Fu and others wanting to try the 2k finishes with wild, and I mean wild paints, enjoy!

http://alsacorp.com/

Mike

Just another thing:

What if I first coat the instrument in polyester (brushed on) and then sprinkle the glitter on it? It seems polyester aren't that hazardous and is fairly easy to sand. Then topcoat with lacquer...

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

I am not sure what polyester finish you are talking of but what I was referring to was this:

http://www.evercoat.com/productDetail.aspx?pID=171

It is a high build polyester primer and will give you a very solid foundation to build multiple layers you need when doing flake. It is a gray finish and requires primer over it to get a proper bond for your finish layers. This is what I would use on an electric guitar to get that perfectly smooth base over wood. It is also very stable and not prone to cracking.

As far as sprinkling flake on... You will never get it even enough to look good. Part of the technique of doing flake is to have a base coat of color with the flake dispersed evenly to reveal the under color. Then the top color is used to give the flake the secondary color. If you don't get the flake even it will look blotchy and not uniform over the entire surface.

Now I have used flake by sprinkling it on but it was only for specific highlighted areas. And example: I did a motorcycle tank with a winter outdoor scene at night. I had the moon behind some wispy clouds and I used flake very sparingly in in the clouds around the moon. It gave the impression of a very cold crisp winter night. Another example is in small stripes where I wanted to accent parts of them but not have a true flake stripe. You can do some interesting things by applying by hand but you have to plan around the fact you can not get it evenly distributed.

Bob

I can get unsaturated clear polyester resin, however the problem is they are frequently too thick to be sprayed and I don't think they can be thinned. I guess I could spray them with a gun that has a massive tip (say 2mm) and mix the glitter inside, however I do not know if they can go over lacquer basecoats.

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

I am not sure what product you mean when you state "glitter". I have read that glitter such as you use in crafts is not suitable to use in at least some paints, in which it will melt from the solvents. Automobile paint glitter is a metal flake product. Anyway, I am back to recommending that you go to an automobile or motorcycle custom body shop.

I do mean glitter intended (or at least sold) for automotive use... I have seen several sellers sell them in Taiwan. Was thinking of ordering them online at first but if it's already here...

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com