Official Luthiers Forum!

I've been putting shellac on my cedar top to protect while working on the backs/sides but it looks uneven and blotchy in spots. I can remove the thin layer of shellac but was wondering what other material I could use to prep the cedar for a WB finish such as EnduroVar?

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Thank You and Best To All

I have not used EnduroVar. But I have done many guitars with KTM water based products. I did use shellac to seal parts of the top during the build. I always sanded/scrapped back to bare wood before applying the KTM direct to the wood. It worked quite well.

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

We have not found need to seal or otherwise prepare the top wood beyond sanding. Enduro-Var adheres well and resists delamination, so no tie-coat or other prep is needed over bare or epoxy-filled wood.

Another relate issue is more a general concern than specifically a waterborne finish one - if routing off the bridge patch finish, we seal any exposed end-grain with shellac applied with an artist brush and then do our usual face grain scrape to remove router fuzzies. Best practice still seems to be to mask the bridge patch prior to finish and avoid scribing through to the wood when removing the mask.

We've only had one Enduro-Var finished redwood top show excessive swelling with traces of finish delamination around the bridge, but that was enough to adjust our finish practices. While we think it may have been a batch of 315g that was thinned to excess versus the differential in end grain versus face grain water absorption rates, addressing both was judged to be prudent.

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For the times they are a changin'

- Bob Dylan

Would it be wise to simply prep/protect the top with WB finish instead of shellac during the build? Skip the shellac altogether? Trying to think of a downside...

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Thank You and Best To All

It is important to keep in mind that, according to General Finishes, you should not use Enduro Var over shellac. It probably adheres much of the time despite that warning, but you would hate to ignore the manufacturer’s recommendation and have something turn out badly. I would sand all the way to fresh wood.

Yeah I remember reading that and have sanded back to bare wood. Do you have an opinion on using Enduro instead of shellac as an initial sealer

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Thank You and Best To All

I don’t use Enduro Var, so no, I can’t address that. But I do think staying with a single product line is pretty important if you are not going to use something organic and generic like shellac. General Finishes knows what they put in their own products; they don’t necessarily know what goes in everybody else’s products. If you are going to top coat with EV, I would seal with their recommended product.

Works fine for spruce, should work fine for cedar. Just raises the grain (like any water based finish) and takes a couple or three coats sanded back to level as a base layer.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.