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The whole point of isolater sealers is that they lock in the oils in woods like rosewood or western red cedar.   Those oils prevent polyester from curing; they're the "anti-catalyst."

Rick if you don't mind, what did you use to isolate the epoxy filler from the polyester? I believe it's the Amine in Epoxy is also an Anti-catalyst.

I've sprayed polyester for 15 years. I've been aware of UV cure but always thought it was a large production solution as Rick's quote from Bob Taylor suggests.

I do think it would be nice to not have to be cleaning a gun after every coat. Downtime between coats is another area that could use some improvement.

A hand-held setup doesn't sound too prohibitively expensive, but what are the dangers involved?

Obviously running electrical power into your booth is begging for trouble.

What are the UV light risks and how do you properly protect yourself?

Hey Sheldon

If you look up the Poly vs. Nitro thread from last summer, Kevin Gallagher MIGHT have a few comments about his UV setup, but I'm not too entirely sure. If not, I do know he has posted about it before and you can search the archive for his posts.

Great topic....so what are the drawbacks to doing a catalyzed poly finish?

I've read the purported benefits of UV cure to include a much more concentrated finish mixture...resulting in less "gassing" off of the solvents after spraying & during curing (i.e. it sounds more enviromentally & personally friendly than nitro). How does catalyzed poly compare to this?

I'm really surprised to hear the general opinion of the UV finishes, but I can see how from the standpoint of production, unless you have a backlog of guitars awaiting finish, it may not be as much of an issue.

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Thanks James,

That was a great thread. I'll keep digging for more UV info.

Parser, my experience is only in catalyzed poly, but the solids content of that is 90-95% if you don't thin it down. I used to thin 10% with MEK, then 5%, lately I don't thin at all. We were experiencing odd texturing of the cured rubbed out finish. It could have been the MEK, or it could have been too long a wait time between coats - or something else I haven't considered. At any rate it's got all the solids you could hope for.