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I have a Tacoma guitar to repair..It has a crack in the side about 2" long....I have cleated the inside of the crack with Mahogany to match the Mahogany in the guitar.... The crack has been left open for a long time and edges of the crack are raised a little from moisture or sweat..The guitar has a satin finish...I have two choices...Just leave it alone (doesn't look good) or fill with CA glue and level with a razor blade...I know I will expose wood the length of the crack....What is the best option to cover this exposed wood...Just use the CA Glue ? Tru oil ?........Any suggestions...Thanks, larry

Leave it alone. The damage by the owner has already been done. Most of the good shops up here won't use finish to repair cracks. Just re-humidify, glue, cleat and done.
Satin finishes can get you in a world of trouble on someone else's instrument.

Sounds like good advice to me ...Tks

Agreed. And I will add that Tacoma had major problems with adhesion of its satin finish. Mess with the finish crack too much and often the top coat will start lifting in large patches. Ask me how I know. Less is more in this instance.


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Aaron Craig

Satin finish will not touch up, no way, no how!

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Brian

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

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

The issue with satins is that most factory finishes are dependent on surface texture as well as flatting agents in the finish for appearance, so there are two components to getting a match. For spot touch-up (e.g., a small area of a body panel), we can usually manipulate only one of the two, so as mentioned, most repair services will not do spot retouch on satin finishes because it seldom results in a adequate match to the original finish - at least without costs that exceed gloss retouch by a factor of two or three.

Standards vary, and we've seen some truly horrific touch-up work from local shops, but we factor in a minimum 3x cost bump for satin touch-up work and explain the difference in cost between a structurally sound repair and a sound, cosmetically pleasing repair of the damage. Most opt for the former, and the few that want to eat $425 worth of finish work on a 6" long below-bridge center-line area understand that an invisible touch-up is not in the cards. Also worth remembering that extending general warranty coverage to RH-related repairs or finish repairs on unknown finishes is usually unwise.

Finally, we see most instruments only after at least one referral from another repair shop, so that means most of our customers are expecting some degree of sticker shock and are already committed enough to the repair to wade through DC traffic for a few hours. For shops without that filter to eliminate the wasted time on what the boss calls 'tire-kickers', a stiff bench fee (at least $50) and an uncapped estimate (e.g., repair estimate plus time & materials for touch-up) seems appropriate.

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

Mohawk makes spray finishes in different sheens. For touching up a satin finish I would start with "dead flat" and bring it up a little if necessary. Usually it is better to use a slightly flatter sheen than the finish being repaired - you don't want the repair area to shine more than the rest of the finish.

http://www.mohawk-finishing.com/catalog ... ictNbr=430