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Enquiring minds want to know...

Yes, and one of our sponsors has a product specifically for this: http://www.gluboost.com/fillnfinish.html

I remember watching a few of their videos demonstrating the process as well. I'm sure you can find them fairly quickly.

That said, my best results have been with drop-filling with more nitro. It took a while to build, but it was nice knowing I had a homogenous finish. Some people let the nitro thicken by putting just a little in a bottle and letting the air start the curing process a few days before doing the drop-fill.

I have some of the glue boost on the bench, just wasn't sure if it would work on nitro...

The bonus of using CA is that it works with almost anything.

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

Yep, do it all the time. We've found that it does shrink back, or at least it causes the nitro underneath to shrink, but we like doing fills with ca then drop filling/overspraying over top.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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Mountain Song Guitars www.mountainsongguitars.com

We just finished extensive fills on a Les Paul, and for the deeper dents, we used the GluBoost product as fill...standard CA burns into nitro nicely, and even the low odor variants like BSI Gold adhere well (but with less aggressive burn-in). After full cure - a week in this case, due to the very deep fills - all repairs were scraped back level, sanded, and a tack coat of lacquer was airbrushed over the CA fills to avoid the issue with the different surface tension characteristics of follow-up lacquer on raw CA. We will shoot a couple coats of nitro on the guitar to finish up, and get it out the door after the usual 10 days in the drying box.

The damage story is that an inattentive person driving an SUV hit the front of the Gaithersburg-based music store and the free-standing display wall between the front window displays and display counter (behind and above which all of the higher-end consignment guitars were displayed) was shifted a couple inches as the vehicle came through the store's windows. Most of the guitars were thrown from the shelf and fell the 8 feet to the floor, with the Les Paul apparently scoring a solid 8 for a near-perfect stuck landing. The neck was split from the heel just below the turn and the fretboard and portion of the face plate veneer was sheared from neck shaft, with several 1/8" to 3/16" dings in the "10" top and multiple deep scratches and scraped lacquer on sides and back. Most of the guitars affected were sold 'as-is' on Reverb, as the economics were that the music store received insurance payment for wholesale cost for the damaged merchandise, and then had to buy back the instruments for sale as used/repaired where it made sense to do so to try to recover the lost revenue versus retail sale.

We still have the final finish work to shoot...will have to get some shots of the deeper CA fills.

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A constellation only takes shape when one maps the whole.
- Beth Brower

I've done it many times. The sanding and levelling of the drop fill is the tricky part. It is very easy to sand/buff away the finish around the drop fill so that you end up with a high spot. I level sand with a tiny piece of sand paper attached to a small stick with double sided tape. I sand really fine, usually 1500 and then finish off with some Buflex. By sanding very fine you only need a small amount of buffing and you are less likely to end up with a high spot. I will occasionally drop fill with CA during the spraying process and that is a great way to get quick and invisible fills. I also use the thickened Nitro method for drop fills when spraying. It is great if you have the time to drop fill with Nitro, but I often don't. I would also give a big plug to the Gluboost products. And we now have a Canadian distributor in Peggy White if any Canadians are looking to order.

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Josh House

Canadian Luthier Supply
http://www.canadianluthiersupply.com
https://www.facebook.com/canadianluthiersupply?ref=hl
House Guitars - Custom Built Acoustic Instruments.
http://www.houseguitars.com

I would guess the overall process takes longer than CA, but over the years we have made many invisible "drop fill" repairs using semi-dry gelled nitro. (LMI at one time sold this product) I simply let a puddle turn to gel on a piece of glass. The beauty of the process is that additional touch up coats are not necessary -- level and buff. But because the nitro shrinks, usually more than one application is necessary.

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Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

Josh, do you have a link for Peggy White/Gluboost? I checked her web site, but couldn't find anything there.

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

Hey Alex, just sent you an email with contact info and pricing for Peggy.

Pricing for the Glu-boost, I mean, not pricing for Peggy

Steve

Thanks for keeping that straight, Steve!

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

We do lacquer drop fills on lacquered instruments to .010"-.015" film thickness - we use CA only when the fill is deeper than that and likely to shrink back for longer than we can tolerate...CA is brilliant for these deep wounds and saves us the downstream visits to touch up deep, fully settled lacquer-only repairs.

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A constellation only takes shape when one maps the whole.
- Beth Brower

I do CA fills. I still find it hard to level sand the CA fills with the CA fill being harder than the surrounding finish. It is really easy to continuously remove more surrounding finish than fill. I take most of the fill down with a razor blade, when I sand it is with a block, but I still find it hard to level.

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http://www.Harvestmoonguitars.com

Use a hard block, not cork or rubber backed.

The razor blade with the taped corners is the tool of choice here. Was this a possible Morelli hack?

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Pat

I asked - he laughed and suggested that it was one of those old techniques that has been around forever, but frequently reinvented or rediscovered. As a corollary, he opined that Mr. Ford's 'Frets.Com' site contains most of mankind's accumulated knowledge of interest to repairmen...and always worth a look when the sin of hubris rears its attractive head.

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A constellation only takes shape when one maps the whole.
- Beth Brower

Ahh yes... well, things are certainly a little less colorful without the Morelli Trio around here. And yes the Frank Ford site is the proverbial Beatles medley catalog of luthery!

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Pat