Official Luthiers Forum!

I am enjoying this forum imensely as I continue to plan my first acoustic build.

While I would love to win the lotto, quit my job, build a recording studio and a guitar making woodshop I have too many other irons in the fire (and too little dough) to get a professional sprayer, compressor, booth etc...

Heck I work in an unairconditioned two car garage and have to pull everything out and set up a work table when I go to working the wood.

I enjoy working a stain finish in by hand but have not been able to get a glass smooth durable prtective coat on most of my other woodworking projects.

I do have a couple of hobby airbrushes that use
the canned compressed air that I used for model building back in highschool and was wondering if these would be adequate for spraying a finish? I have more reading to do but will probably use polyester over oil stain on everything but the neck and will go with a tung oil only on the neck.

A buddy of mine uses the comressed air can type sprayer in his repair shop & has pretty good success with it.
If you can get tips that spray a fan pattern (instead of the standard round pattern) you'll find it a lot easier to get a good even finish.
You might have to thin the finish more than you would with an air supplied spray gun. A bit of experimentation should set you on the right road.
Good luck with it. I'd like to hear how it works for you.
Cheers,   Dan

Canned air is expensive, and you will use quite a few cans finishing a guitar. Look into a used compressor at garage sales, or pawn shops. If you shop carefully, you probably can get the whole setup for what you would spend on canned air.

Al

Air brush will work if you have a large tip and don't expect one coat to equal one coat by a gun. the orange peal will be more but sands out at leveling.

If you're looking for a nice satin finish an Air brush will do a fine job, my first couple of guitars were finished this way and looked really nice. I found that because it spays on fairly dry I could just keep spraying in one continuous coat. I sprayed a finish coat of almost pure thinners and left it to cure.

I've sprayed gun stocks like this for many years and so was confident it would work on guitar. By the way I just used a small hobby Air Brush compressor.

If you want to buff it to a gloss, then you will find it takes a lot of spraying to get a thick enough layer. I don't like glossy finishes so had the benefit of only having to put on a very thin coat.


I now FP my finish though.

ColinColin S38915.2109375

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