Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi gang -
What's your preference for finish on a birdseye maple fingerboard?

Heh, heh, it must be all the rage right now to do maple fingerboards. There was just a thread over on the Mandolin Cafe' about this. What I recently found is that there is a Min-Was product I didn't previously know about that turns out to be just what I personally wanted. The usual maple fingerboard is finished in lacquer or some sort of poly gloss finish that gets scrapped off the frets after the fact, not what I wanted. I prefer a matte look that just seals the wood to keep it clean. Linseed oil and turpentine work well for ebony and dark woods but make maple look too "oiled" for my taste. I don't usually care for the MinWax stuff but this is quite nice. It is called Wipe-On Poly. If you just build up a few coats you can't even tell it is there except for the feel, but it still is sealing the wood so it won't get finger grease and slimeola-glort into the wood. I still need to do some experiments to see if I can put it on before the frets w/o having to do extensive slot cleaning. Even if it has to go on after fretting I think it won't be an issue except to make sure you don't get it puddling near the fret edges.

Alan D.

I seal the fretboard with vinyl sealer, then shoot two coats of laquer on before fretting it. Then I shoot 3 more laquer coats before buffing it out.
Dressing the frets cleans the laquer off 'em just fine.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

I have used Stew MacDonald's lacquer for instruments spray in aerosol. I gave it 3 to 4 coats and was good to go.

Jim

Dye it green, or blue, or purple!

I'm doing one soon and plan on useing nitro. Easy to redo and touch up in the future.