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I have a Finish touch-up question for you all. I am doing work on an electric guitar that I had built a while back. The guitar is finished and the finish was tinted orange. I needed to route a recess for the control plate, so I did so and rounded over the lip with a little sanding. Naturally, in doing so, I sanded slightly into the finish on the back, as one would expect to do. Now comes time to touch up this area. I plan to mask off the remainder of the guitars back, slightly beyond where I had sanded into. Follow this with spraying some vinyl sealer, tinted lacquer and then some clear coats of Nitocellulose. I borrowed an airbrush from a friend to do this small area. Is this the right way to go about this? Does anyone know if I will run into any issues spraying the Vinyl sealer over the small amount of overlap into the clearcoat? As a side note, the guitar has never been finished sanded all the way (maybe 600 grit) and has been curing doe about 4 years!

Thanks,
Scott

Do you have bare wood to cover? If not there is no need for a sealer. If that is the case I would slightly soften the area with some cellosolve or butyl acetate. Soften up a slightly larger area than you intend to repair and then when it's ready spray on some thin coats of nitro. This will amalgamate the finish rather than mechanical bonding. The more you can feather these coats out at the edges, the less sanding later and the less chance of sanding through and creating more work. I would let something like this cure out for about 12 weeks, maybe more, before I tried to level and buff.

If you have bare wood, I would seal by applying some dewaxed shellac onto only the bare wood, then conduct the repair similar to above. Taping off is a good idea, but stay back from where you are planing to spray, if you wet edge up to the tape you will have a ridge to level out when you are done. As far as the tint.... that's the tricky part. Overlapping the old finish with fresh tinted material will likely make it darker so try to work in real tight on your repair with the tinted finish, get the color on in as few coats as possible and switch to clear. Or you could try and color with some stain or dye prior to refinishing the area, make sure to test this for compatibility, with not only finish but cellosolve or acetate to make sure it will work first.

_________________
Brian

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

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