Official Luthiers Forum!

"If you asked me what, specifically, I loved about it, I don't think I could tell you. All I know is I loved the feeling I got using it. It felt pure, maybe natural, sort of being one with it."

That sounds kind of 60's You're not into huffing solvents are you?

I try not to get too close to the fumes. Initially the smell of lacquer thinner would give me a headache, but after it burned out those brain cells it didn't bother me any more.

I find this hard to believe when compared to your typical poly finish.

I love nitro because it's easy to fix, it looks good, feels warm in the hand, and because it's traditional.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Same here and it is so easy to use!

Right; 'pure'. From what I understand the least toxic thing in lacquer thinner is toluene. It's toxic at 1/10 the concentration you can smell. Don't let's get into methyl-ethyle-ketone.

When we were kids my older brother and I built model airplanes using balsa and tissue paper. The 'Ambroid' glue we used was nitrocellulose, and the paint, called 'dope', was too: the dope had a banana oil added to make it flexible. My brother built more plane, and used a lot more of that stuff then I did. He'd be dizzy when he come down to supper often enough. When he went in for a draft physical he got a medical deferment because his kidneys were in such bad shape. Correlation is not causation, of course, but I'm sure all the solvent exposure didn't help.

You can eat a bit of shellac with no harm. You can drink ethyl alcohol, in limited quantities. If you use the traditional olive oil as a lubricant you're in safe territory. Even cutting the alcohol with some acetone isn't so bad, since you do have enzymes that can deal with it. The solvents for oil-resin varnishes are less benign; turpentine is a known carcinogen in skin contact, and you certainly would not drink it. The varnish I'm using now uses a citrus solvent.

None of these things is 'safe'; people die of alcohol overdose pretty regularly. But to talk of lacquer as 'pure and 'benign' makes me wonder if you've sniffed a little too much of it.

I won't get into whether what others do is a good or bad idea; I will only talk about my own situation. I'm a hobbyist builder. I might build to sell someday, but I will never rely on building guitars for income that I need.

As a hobbyist, applying French polish exclusively is the easiest decision I make. It does the protection job well enough; it looks great; it sounds great; I don't have to buy any spray equipment or set up a spray room; and I don't put my health at risk putting it on the guitar. The idea of working with either nitro or UV cured finishes is not appealing to me at all. I have a lot of respect for the folks who do it, because I know that doing it well (and safely) takes more of an investment of time and money than I am willing to give to this hobby.

If/when I ever build guitars to sell, I can say this: I will want to target the small market of guitar buyers who place value on having a good French polish finish on their guitars. I won't do that just because it is the finish I prefer to put on the guitar; I will also do it because most factories are not interested in trying to apply a French polish to the guitars they sell. It's too difficult, too labor intensive, and too expensive (because it is too skilled labor intensive). In general, I think hand builders of guitars are better off trying to market themselves to the folks who want things the factories can't or won't give them, and a good French polish is one of those things.

I don't have a great spray booth, so I'm constantly dealing with bug legs, cat hair, and other things creeping into (under?) my finish. I love being able to dab the spot with a little thinner and pick the offending tidbit out. Can't do that with other finishes.

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Tony Thatcher
Bozeman, Montana

Tony, what you said got me thinking. In my last house I had a spray booth. I don't even know where I could set on up in the new house. It's too small. Suddenly, my warm fuzzies for nitro faded. And that gallon of EnduroVar that has been ignored is waving at me saying, "Over here!"

Stew Mac sells EnduroVar as an alternative to nitro. I've sprayed it on kitchen cabinets but never guitars. Any thoughts on using it on an acoustic?

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Julie Moriarty
http://JulimorCreations.com

John Greven uses Endurovar, I think.

Perfectly awful stuff in terms of spray handling compared with nitrocellulose, but once cured, very lacquer-like in appearance and very tough...never any issues with any type of lacquer separation.

A former student here went on to apprentice with Mr. John Greven, and passed details of the finishing schedule on to us a few years back. Mr. Greven is now brushing his EnduroVar coats over SilverTip pore fill, while we are still spraying...the material is incredibly prone to runs on vertical surfaces, but once the coat starts kicking, we just wipe off the run and touch up with a brush or another spray coat. EnduroVar does flow out, so the mega-size orange peel appearance quickly becomes a gloss coat.

We are in the middle of sanding down 6 necks finished with EnduroVar, as well as one body. No real issues, other than the usual waterbased finish application stuff alluded to above. Buying a gallon through Zoro is usually the better deal versus quarts from Woodcraft, etc.

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

"the material is incredibly prone to runs on vertical surfaces, but once the coat starts kicking, we just wipe off the run and touch up with a brush or another spray coat. "

Rather than wiping off the run an old finisher showed me the way to "pull" them off using a piece of masking tape. Gently lay the tape over the run, sticky side down (still holding on to both ends of the tape) and lift the run off the surface. A light dusting immediately after can sometimes make it flow out and disappear before things dry.

Unlike lacquer, wiping off a run in EnduroVar does not remove or damage already-applied, dried material to any noticeable degree, so a quick swipe with a Polyfoam brush is a quick, easy way to stay within the window of opportunity for a no-sand recoat and still leave some fresh finish on the touched up area. Any surface roughness from a repaired run is easily sanded out once the finish cures, so there's not much of a penalty associated with either brushing the finish on (like Mr. Greven now does) or spraying over dried areas where excess material has been removed. Lacquer is so much easier than either EnduroVar or High Performance (which we've used on furniture wear surfaces like work table tops), with its ability to level on vertical or complex surfaces at film thicknesses that seem to defy gravity...perhaps someday, we'll have a small shop water-based finish that does not stink, self-levels to resist runs, and gives consistent coating thickness.

I think we would use lacquer for everything in the shop were it not for those individuals that have body chemistry and habits which is simply not compatible with anything short of a synthetic.

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