Official Luthiers Forum!

I've wrestled around with some of the usual finish options. On my fourth guitar doing Nitro. I've done wipe on poly once and tru oil once.

While it looks pretty smashing to have that mirror flat shine - for right now, nitro, flat sanding, wet sanding, grain filling and so forth is too much dang work and it is a serious pain to do outdoors for me with all of the unforeseen elements. Bugs. Pollen. Dust. At this point I do not have a spray booth.

I LIKE when the grain is still exposed and you can feel it. I feel like I'm not choking the wood to death with an artificial finish.

Tru oil and wipe on poly don't allow me to do color.. Or do they?

I enjoy HVLP spraying, just not the time consuming and often frustrating work that follows.

So after these thoughts, I'm wondering what kind of finish option will let me give wood a semi transparent color and have a gloss finish that still allows the wood to be open and the grain very well exposed?

Can I apply some sort of dye under wipe on poly?

Can I omit pore filler, HVLP spray a wash coat, then add color, then add a couple of mild lacquer coats and do a minor level with 1000 grit then polish? This could potentially give me the result I'm after.. Shiny, transparent color, yet thin and exposed grain.

Some modern taylor acoustic guitars that I have seen lately have their grain texture still fully exposed and they are a semi gloss. How is this done? Anyone know what kind of finish that is?

Gibson faded series les pauls and SGs have a very thin open grain finish that are red, yellow and black in color. You can easily feel nearly bare mahogany with your fingers. These finishes look great and I can only assume that they are not nearly as time consuming as a traditional nitro finish that must be flat sanded and buffed.

What do you think? I'm trying to be professional while also being efficient with the finishes that I will be applying to my instruments in the future.

You can put analine dyes on top of and under Tru-Oil. I just did this one that way.

http://www.tdpri.com/forum/attachments/ ... _right-jpg

Interesting idea. Do you have any more pictures of that guitar to share? Did you create a subtle sunburst? It looks good.

Yeah I've been looking and reading a bunch into using different types of dyes under a oil or wipe on poly finish. I think that will be what I try next.

I'd love to see other peoples different takes on finishes though. Pictures would be great. Who doesn't like to show off?

Great looking guitar. I would love to see more photos as well. It has a vintage vibe to it.

Rick

If you aren't afraid of it because it is less durable than lacquer, shellac could be a good choice. It can be colored with alcohol based dyes, and I've found that it has a nice bit of shine even without pore filling.