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I thought one of the advantages of z-poxy is that mixing is not difficult to do and get right?  Anybody want 3/4 of a can of Colortone grain filler. I am going to chuck it.  Two bad experiences and I've had it
If I understand correctly LMI's KTM takes the place of Stewmac's Colortone sealer and top coat?
When I sanded the first coat of sealer I went through the shellac wash in a few places and had a blotchy top.  I used the shellac to seal it against the ebony binding to keep the top clean.  Next time I'll use epoxy filler and maybe just the KTM product. Thanks for all the input!

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A higher purpose for wood.
Rich Smith
Issaquah, WA

One of the big, big issues is that a lot of these materials have different "wetting" properties when they hit bare wood. You want to have materials that have the same properties or else you have to make sure that what you seal with is a continuous film.

I found that the West epoxy had exactly the same wetting characteristics as the McFadden rosewood sealer that I use on most instances, therefore it didn't matter if there was a patch here and there of epoxy film and a patch here or there of bare wood with the epoxy only in the pores. It's very, very forgiving, and that seems to the elusive goal that you are all chasing after.   

Even if you had to pay 10 or 15 bucks to get a guitar pore filled right, it's very much worth it.   For one thing, oil based fillers shrink for quite a while. For another, they make for poor finish adhesion.   With epoxy, you'll literally glue the finish on. It's a tie coat...as in "tie the finish to the wood."

I am a recent convert to epoxy pore filling, and I held off because of a bunch of issues that I read about with Zpoxy...the color, the need to sand all the way back, the wetting by brushing on a coat thinned with alcohol. All that just looked wrong to me.   Having just started on using the West epoxy for laminating necks, I thought what the hell, let's try it. It worked spectacularly well. I'm certainly not saying that there aren't other good epoxies out there for this application, but the West stuff is great; their pump system takes all the guess work out; it's a great adhesive; and I can get it locally very easily.

[QUOTE=Rod True]OK, Joe posted while I was typing so he's the first one to mention using the 207 hardener.

Got any pics of epoxied bodies folks, that would be good to see what the differences are between WEST, Z-Poxy or others.[/QUOTE]

Yes Rod, The "water clear" claim of the 207 hardener is what attracted me to it. I can take a few snaps of the back tomorrow when I put the first coat of West.

Funny thing about the info on the 207 hardener on the WEST SYSTEM web site... It says:

"This hardener was especially developed for use with WEST SYSTEM Brand 105 Resin in coating applications where an exceptionally clear, moisture-resistant, natural wood finish is desired. Cures to a light amber color, similar to traditional spar varnishes."

Exceptionally clear... Cures to a light amber color... hmmm...

Then it goes on to talk about "An ultraviolet inhibiting additive" and stuff.

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Todd Rose
Ithaca, NY

https://www.dreamingrosesecobnb.com/todds-art-music

https://www.facebook.com/ToddRoseGuitars/

[QUOTE=Rod True]

What is the shelf life of the resin and the hardener [/QUOTE]

WEST SYSTEM has info about shelf life on their web site. westsystem.com, product information page.

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Todd Rose
Ithaca, NY

https://www.dreamingrosesecobnb.com/todds-art-music

https://www.facebook.com/ToddRoseGuitars/

In reasonably thin film thickness, the cured West epoxy has no amber tint that I can see. You might see some amber tint if it were to be left on a quarter inch thick...

I'm not using the epoxy on tops or maple, just the woods that need pore filling. I'm using Waterlox as a top preseal.

I add a tiny bit of MEK metal acid dye to my polyester top coats to intentionally get a slight amber aged look and to counteract the slight bluish tint given to the poly by the cobalt drier.

All I know is that after having done finish on more than 3,000 guitars and basses, this is the best system I've used to date. Your mileage may vary.

Ok, as promised, here is a couple of photos of the first application of West . one shot shows it only on the side and the other shows half of the back.

Sure looks good to me.

Wow, that really pops the grain. Thanks Joe. I'm sold on the epoxy for sure. Now one other question if I can, will epoxy bleed darker woods into lighter woods? I have a maple guitar that is bound with ebony. Now I was just going to seal with shellac than spray the nitro (I'll eventually make the switch to poly some time as well) with no filler needed but........

Rick, I was going to ask you what you use to pop the figure when finishing maple? so........

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For the System 3 stuff do you need to use the Silica thickner for grain filling?

_________________
A higher purpose for wood.
Rich Smith
Issaquah, WA

Rick, can you apply water-based lacquer over Waterlox?

_________________
A higher purpose for wood.
Rich Smith
Issaquah, WA

Since I'm almost rabidly against the use of water based formulations (for me, that is; go ahead and use it if you like slow drying, crappy finishes); I wouldn't know if it works over Waterlox. As far as I'm concerned, water based lacquer doesn't work on guitars, period; I'd send instruments out for finishing before I'd use any more of the stuff. Everyone I know who does use it starts off with a bunch of explanations and excuses for why they do while admitting that it isn't as good as nitro lacquer which I don't think is as good as polyester, catalyzed polyurethane, varnish, or French polish.

I'm not using thickeners in the epoxy, at least for transparent or translucent finishes. I want whatever I put on to be really clear.

Hey Rick, While you're looking, have you ever re-coated the West 105 within the 12 hour period as the tech sheets suggest? That is with the 207 hardener. It says that you may re-coat without any surface prep. this could save a bunch of time for sure and that is one of the other things that attracted me to the 207. It might cost a bit more though. The ratio is 3:1. Incidentally, to coat this whole guitar including neck and peg head front I used 4 teaspoons of product.

[QUOTE=Rick Turner] The nice thing about the West system is that they
have the metering pumps for a 5:1 ratio. One full stroke on part "A", one
full stroke on part "B", and you've got it. No measuring, no gram scale
baloney; just pump away.[/QUOTE]

I've had a West Systems pump start sticking. After depressing, it would
sometimes go almost all the way back up, but not quite, so the next
pump wasn't the correct amount. I always use a gram scale for that
reason.

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Mike

"The Dude abides. I don't know about you but I take comfort in that. It's good knowin' he's out there. The Dude. Takin' 'er easy for all us sinners. Shoosh." The Stranger

I guess you could always just pull up on the pumps to make sure they're
completely up too. But using the scale is so fun!

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Mike

"The Dude abides. I don't know about you but I take comfort in that. It's good knowin' he's out there. The Dude. Takin' 'er easy for all us sinners. Shoosh." The Stranger

I would also like to see (in pictures if possible) how you all pore fill your necks. I have no problems with filling flat surfaces and sides of guitars, but the necks always give me problems. I've tried razor blades and credit cards, but neither one of these really spreads out the zpoxy evenly.

How do you do it?

One more thing, I would love to see how the west system epoxy looks on the raw mahogany neck. If it doesnt darken the heel of the neck, I'm sold on it!

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Reguards,

Ken H

Hang on Ken and I'll go snap a photo for you!

Here you go Ken. Now bear in mind that this is a very inexpensive import guitar. I think that if there were more attention paid to the heel block to try and match the grain orientation it would look much less noticable. I took one with a flash and one without.

I do it the same way that Hesh mentioned...with a thin rubber gloved finger.   I suppose you could cut concave curves into plastic squeegees, but it's pretty easy this way.

I think that for every hour the epoxy fill adds to the whole process of finishing, I probably save at least an hour and a half, AND the result is a thinner and better finish.

Yep, rubber glove here too! I kind of dabbed it on with a rubber cooking spatula (pictured above in white) and leveled it off with my gloved finger.

Did you catch my question for you above Rick? Not being impatient just wondering if you stumbled across it?