Official Luthiers Forum!

hi,

probably a stupid question, i have a old gibson that i had to remove the old finish due to the cracks and the fact it had hardwear brown varnish all over it,

bare with me !

there is no way of levelling the wood on the back with out going dangerously thin,

can i put a thickish layer of zpoxy finishing resin over it, sand it back to wood, leaving the resin in the uneven parts. then finish sand and spray over with nitro

would this work?

how would it look?

thanks

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Sounds like you have already removed the finish. If not I would try to repair the cracks with CA. using a paper towel inside as you run thin CA in. Then address finish issues.

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

As for leveling with epoxy, I suppose you could do a slight amount of that as you pore fill, but only slight dips. Any more than that is likely to show.

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

It might work, but you would have to leave a layer of epoxy over all the wood, not sand back to the wood in places.
Have you considered pore-filling/levelling with CA?
GluBoost for example could work well and different thicknesses will not show nearly as much as Zepoxy.

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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.

thanks Colin,i dont know anything about gluboost, the guitar wood is quite a light coloured mahogany, so will show any darker patches like you say

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GluBoost is a good product, and available from Tonetech in UK, have a gander.

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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.

You may want to tone the finish you spray over the epoxy or CA filler/pore filler. It might help obscure some of the dings and dents you leveled over. Many of the old mahogany bodied guitars were stained and/or had toned finishes.

If the epoxy is going to be thickish and not just a pore fill you would be better off with an opaque color on it. Not sure how many spots you have or how deep, but if there is any build up you will lose your grain definition in those areas and like Joe said it will look blotchy. I've done small spots, with dust in the epoxy, and those were probably more noticeable to me than others.