Official Luthiers Forum!

The title pretty much says it all. I am making a guitar with a burl veneer over the face. Is there any special products that I should be aware about for filling burl, or will the regular products work?

In my personal experience, all regular products will work. Some will work more to your personal liking than others. So, if you have some chipped or cracked or otherwise expendable burl scraps, laminate them down to a substrate and experiment with various methods. I like wood pore filler, colored with the stain of my choice, but most others here seem to prefer clear fillers like epoxy, etc.

I vote for epoxy too. Tiny pores might be ok to fill with opaque fillers in a clear finish situation but burls can have very large occlusions. I would rather not fill those kinds of things with something opaque. Epoxy also brings up the wood grain and figure like nothing else. Since people use burls specifically for the wood and always apply clear or tint coats...filling with epoxy maximizes the aesthetic potential of a burl.

Epoxy is very aggressive so it adheres to oily woods much better than other glues.

I'll always use epoxy to stabilize the soft, spongy material in highly spaulted woods too. I'll use an artist brush to paint it in and then paint, fill, sand...repeat.....until the surface is smooth. There's nothing better for popping the grain...I am adamant to repeat.

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I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

Me likes to use bondo and pigment.

usually me mix 3 different batches with colourant to match colours in the burl.

If done with care...it will not look filled.


blessings
Padma

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Audiences and dispensations on Thursdays ~ by appointment only.


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Clear for me too, I use epoxy. It not only fills the voids and looks natural, it also re-structuralises the 'defects'.

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http://www.bobmatthewsguitars.co.uk

Not only that, but IMO water based finishes don't bring out the best from dark woods.
DAMHIKT.
Or, if you want, you can ask..........

Anyone ever pore fill with fiberglass resin?

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Jason Moe
LaCrosse WI 54601

I just finished a spalted maple with a red wood burl top guitar and it was a real bear. It was recommended to me to use thin CA and sand it into the top making a slurry filler. It worked ok but in hind sight I'd rather use epoxy the next time. The thin CA worked really well to toughen up the soft areas especially in the spalt lines though.