Official Luthiers Forum!

I made a terrible OOPS and managed to get a drop of CA on a finished guitar. Of course I wiped it off as soon as I saw it...now I have a smeared spot on the finish. Is there an easy way to remove this or do I need to sand it off and re-buff the guitar again?

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Reguards,

Ken H

Ken I have no idea if this would work but you could test on scrap and it might save you some effort if it does work and not harm the nitro.

Hobby stores sell this:



It's used for softening and dissolving CA and is even used to clean it off your hands.  Now caution, it might eat nitro, I don't know.  But perhaps if you have some scrap to test on, put some on a soft cloth and see what happens.  It takes a bit of time, 10 seconds+, to start to work.  It also smells like someone cut the cheese in the room......

Good luck.

Odds are that CA dissolver will also burn into your finish...I know I had it happen to me...but my finish is always Nitro or shellac so perhaps it won't on some polymer that you may have used. The best way I get CA off a finish is to very lightly scrape with a glass slide ( the microscope/lab type). I have had great success that way and just needed to follow up with a little meguiers to finish it off. If it's a drop and that's all, you could even "chip" it off in one piece. You might want to tape around it first so you don't mess up the surronding finish.

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Dave Bland

remember...

"If it doesn't play in tune...it's just pretty wood"

Thanks guys!

I have to make a trip into town today anyway, so I'll try to find some of the undo stuff. I'm really bummed about it... was almost ready to post some pictures of the finished product. That will have to wait it seems.

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Reguards,

Ken H

Ken,

You didn't mention what type of finish is on the guitar in question. This will make a difference in which method you choose to fix it.

It is Nitro. Just got it finished and buffed.

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Reguards,

Ken H

If you had not wipped it and allowed it to cure you could have scraped level and buffed out and the odds would be you would never have seen it.

OOPS! It doesn't take much to disolve a nitro finish. Acetone (CA dissolver), one of the solvents for nitro will remove the CA glue but will eat a whole in the nitro as well. Your best bet is to sand and rebuff or scrape sand and rebuff.
Good luck.

This just happened to me, I was refretting an old OM-28 with bar frets, I had everything taped off well (I thought) and was applying a drop of CA at or very near the edge of the fret.  One fret required a bit more tapping into place than the others and it squirted out a little CA.  I assumed it was caught by the tape but it was not.  When I removed the tape I found a small area of discoloration, mostly just a lighter look to the mahogany, where the glue had dispersed.

To remedy, I just cleaned the area carefully and applied some shellac usind the french polish method and after a few minutes of working it into the finish, no eveidence of the discoloration remained.  It's not been some time since the repair and no problems.  This won't work for every CA problem, but it did a good job here.

Best

Bruce

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Bruce Herrmann
"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."

CA will wick right into and under masking tape, and that leaves you with masking tape superglued to a finish. In that case, you're screwed... Absolutely do not depend on masking tape to prevent CA drips and accidents; it only makes the situation worse.

For CA on a nitro finish, the only remedy is to scrape and sand it off and buff out the finish and hope against hope that the CA did not burn deep into the nitro lacquer...which it will on a new finish.

When wicking CA into fret slot ends, you might try tipping the guitar up at an angle so the far side edge of the fingerboard is the lowest point.   That way if the glue runs down (it will), it will either drop off onto your bench (it will) or just to the end of the fret, and it won't drip onto the neck finish.

Don't ask me how I know all this stuff...

Rick--How do you know all this stuff.....????

Because I've made every mistake in the book, and now I'm making new ones that aren't in the book...

Rick ;
Your such a well of knowledge !
Every maker on this site should be grateful for your sharing and great attitude on all the subjects you respond to!

Thank you very much!


Mike

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Mike Collins

Hey Rick, where can I buy this book that everybody is speaking of... it
would be agreat time saver since I believe that I missed some mistakes
along the way!!!

My book, "10,500 mistakes that I made so you don't have to", is available to all OLF members for the discounted price of $24.95. The only problem is I can't find the box I had them in.

My next edition, "10,501 mistakes I made so you don't have to" will be out shortly, also at the discounted price for OLFers.

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Kurt Thomas

"There's a first time for everything even if you do it by mistake."