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Apart from the obvious fire danger, how dangerous is 'nitro'. I would use in basement laundry room with respirator. What are dangers to rest of basement and rest of house-humans, pets, plants. I would be doing one guitar at a time.

Bob

Forget that idea The slovent/Catalyst is pretty lethal.

Just spray it out in your yard. For 1 guitar at at time I don't think they will dispatch the EPA swat team.   

I do that with my electrics (I send the acoustics out for finishing). It is kind of a pain, but it works ok.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

The big danger in Nitro is the explosion hazard. If you are in a tight confined space I don't recommend using it. In the Back yard will be much safer. You need good ventelaton and wear a resperator and grounding device.
   Outside you are pretty safe. You can use a large cardboard box or a plastic wardrope to keep it protected from the bugs.
john hall

The solvents used are flamable so don't let the vapors
build up, have plenty of venting. No unsealed motors,
sparks, static electricity. Watch out for build ups of the overspray, that white powder is highly flamable even when dry. I don't know if I should say this but Nitrocellulose is used in the making of things that go
boom!

It's explosive, and laquer thinner's carcinogenic, nasty stuff. Or it was, last time I checked. Repirator and gloves are a must, as is good ventilation (although frankly, that's true for most any finish).

Gun cotton is also called nitrocellulose, it goes boom. I'm assuming that these are the same compound? I don't have access to our company's chemical reference library at the moment so I can't check.

Laughing from the cinders.

How dangerous?????

It depends....


How long do you want to live?



Don Williams38635.429837963

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

The way I look at it it is as dangerous as you make it. Know the hazards, take the appropreate percausions and you will be fine. It is both highly flamable and toxic, but if treated right is probably the best gloss finish.

After spraying nitro for a few years with a respirator, and a ventilated
spray booth it was hurting my lungs. I would say do not expose yourself
or your family to it unless your very well set up to handle the whole
process.

_________________
John Mayes
http://www.mayesluthier.com

   The simple facts that there are laws controlling its use and sale and a thick stack of warnings and MSDS information surroundng it is enough to tell anyone that this stuff is deadly and should be avoided without proper protection at all costs. Anyone who minimizes its danger is foolish and should be ignored and avoided with the same ferver.

   It has killed many in the years that it has been used and will kill many more who are careless with it before its use is no longer allowed. Spraying one guitar at a time can be easily done outdoors as long as the temperature permits. Be sure, though, to hang it outdoors after spraying it there. It takes a little time for the solvents to gas off or evaporate so you don't want to bring them into the family. The fumes will quickly fill every room in your house even if you hang it in your garage. If your wife and kids are smelling it, they're being affected by it.

A good rule to live by is "If you can smell it...it is doing damage."

Spraying outdoors still calls for a repirator since a small breeze can throw it right back into you face pretty quickly. Wear gloves to since you hand can absorb nasty stuff quickly enough to make you sick and eventually kill you if you do it on a regular enough basis. If you live within fifty feet or less of your neighbors houses, don;t spray it out of common consideration for their safety too. A reasonable distance will allow for the solvents and material to dry before thasy reach anyone else but those living in your own home.

Just remember that one person my never be hurt by long term repeated exposure to these types of chemicals and solvents, but another could possibly develop a chronic illness or condition from only a few short exposure periods.

It's nothing to mess with if you want to see your kids grow and build guitars into your retirement years. I don;t even use a respirator, but a full face outside air supply mask, a full set of Tyvek painters overalls and heavy pigment rubber gloves every time I go into my booth. I've had enough trouble physically to know that I don't need to be contributing voluntarily to more.

Be careful and remember that all who smell it can be affected by it...that includes Wife, kids, pets, neighbors. Lead based paints and asbestos have been vitually eliminated from our homes and buildings because of their dangers and they didn't even come close to what these lacquers acn do to you when used incorrectly.

I was in the shop of one of the most celebrated archtop builders in the world back in 1989 or 1990 and he was spraying lacquer right in the shop at a window with a fan blowing out. The shop was filled with a cloud of lacquer mist and I literally had to go outside in order to breathe. He didn't have on a mask or gloves and even had a muscle shirt on exposing his entire shoulders and arms. I was feeling sick for the rest of the day and as I drove back to PA, but it didn't seem to bother him at all while I was there. Interesting how we all have our ways.

   If a great finish is more important than the health of those around you and your self...spray away and enjoy the results. There are much safer alternatives that are yielding great results for builders like John Greven and Mike Doolin. The first are of focus in my shop was the spray booth since I understood and appreciated the dangers surrounding the materials we use and their application. A positive pressure booth with more than sufficient ventilation and exposion protection are a wise investment for any size shop. If you're just a hobbyist or weekend lutherie, use the water based alternatives like KTM-9 and the like.

Sorry to seem like a party pooper her, but I'm enjoying watching my kids grow up and look forward to meeting my grandchildren when they come.

Regards,
Kevin Gallagher/Omega Guitars

    If you use Nitro like all finishes you need to protect yourself.
    Yes all finishes will react to different people differently. Nitro lac is still one of the best finishes for instruments. Once the solvents are gone it is a very inert material on very safe. I have a spray booth to access and use masks .
    Any mineral spirit product is also a health hazard if you want to get technical. Educate yourself about the stuff in your shop. CA can also be bad news as is cocobolo and sasafrass. Many woods are very toxic. Sycamore carries arsnic.
    use common sense and you will be fine and build a long time
john hall
PS using lacquer for over 15 years and still kickin

One of the things I noticed about Bryan Galloups shop while visiting last weekend was his state of the art spray booth. It was a room probably 15 X 15 foot with a stand in booth that was a good 8X8. Floor to ceiling filers that pull the lacquer fumes and over spray through to the outside. Bryans shop is hundreds of yards away from the next nearest place.

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

I would avoid spraying anything in your house especially if the room where you plan to spray has a pilot light. Always wear a respirator, that goes without saying but I've had problems with the fumes affecting my eyes even with an exhaust fan. I think Kevin hit the nail on the head. If the temp and humidity are right, spray outside. This can be tricky because of wind and bugs but for what you're doing safety first.
Steve

   When the VOC control laws changed in California years ago, all of the builders there were forced to seek out alternatives to the more dangerous nitrocellulose lacquers. I sprayed more than 10,000 electric bodies and necks and then went on the spray my first 350 or so acoustic guitars using nitrocellulose lacquer over. All of that work was done over a 17 or 18 year period and Ive never had a physical problem connected to its use, but I have known people who have developed some pretty serious conditions from exposure to the finsh without proper ventilation, collection or protection.

   Common sense is good advise, but it entails the expense and use of good equipment to become a reality in any shop. I would rather give good advise to the extreme of the protective side and feel good that I know no one following it will suffer because of it. Advise to the other end could prove to costly or, quite honestly and realistically, fatal to some one following less than the most careful instructions.

   Shortcuts and minimizing the serious nature of these chamicals are not wise. Just because one person hasn't suffered any effects while spraying with a relaxed view of the danger involved doesn't mean everyone will. Better safe now then sorry later.

I've only heard of one explosion in all of my years that took the life of a finisher. It was in a larger cabinet shop in NJ where several guns were throwing nitro finish at a high rate at least 12 hours a day. A small spark, some filters in need of cleaning and all of the finish looming in the air created a bomb like environment and one man lost his life. Remember that a family lost a husband and father too when it happened so the effects reach beyond the finisher and are tragic. I've heard of a few flashes that have occurred in other shops that blew a door of of its hinges or something to that effect but the concentration of finish in the booth has to be radically high in order for ignition to occur.

   Many more are the stories of finishers with lung and heart and nerve problems stemming from exposure, both long term and short, to finishes of all sorts. There is a local guy here who has lodged a litigation against one of the largest guitar shops in the world because the exhaut system in their booth failed at one time and he was rendered unconcious and undetected in the booth for almost an hour before he was pulled to safety. It was during a night shift when staff is reduced and more sparsely placed throughout the plant. He was wearing a repirator, but when all there is to breathe is finish, you suffocate. He now has severe neurological damage and breathing problems. That one incident was only the final straw in his long exposure issue there. Ventilation and its maintenance are of paramount importance.

   If you wouldn't invite your kids to join you in your spray booth while you shoot a coat because of the danger of exposure, you probably shouldn't be in there either...and they would agree with that since they care about you. I don't allow any one into my booth even during visits to my shop when I'm not spraying finish just in case there would ever be some sort of residue or a chance of a whiff being gotten by them. It would be like saying a single shorth term exposure to any other poison would be OK...it's foolish and rediculous. No exposure is safe without proper protection...period.

   It's just a shiny coating on a guitar...it pales in comparison to the importance of your health and that of your family. Like If there's one piece of advice I can confidently offer it's this...ignore anyone who minimizes the danger and avoid their advice at all costs.

   This is an issue that I could never change my opinion on with a clear concience. I grew up in my grandfather's wood and machine shops and he always stressed the importance of sfaety and protection from solvents and chamicals both through superficial contaqct and through breathing or respiratory contact...and that was during the preOSHA, old school days where profits bore much more importance than the welfare of workers.

Don Williams pretty much hit it on the head above when he asked, "How dangerous? How long do you want to live?" The two go very closely hand in hand with one another. That simple tongue in cheek post has much more validity that many are admitting. Maybe it's just a lack of education on the true nature of the product, though.

Regards,
Kevin Gallagher/Omega Guitars

Kevin Gallagher38635.5456944444

I hear you loud and clear.

At the root of it I am not, nor will I ever be "properly" equipped to spray. I will still blast the occassional electric body in the yard but I have been pretty careful about the fumes. First I let it dry outside, then in the garage (with the door open).

this just reinforces my decision to outsource the finishing.

_________________
Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

Much has been said, but I'd like to add a little. I did a science project on plastics many years ago, and reasearched and even made some nitrocellulose.

Cellulose is a polysaccharide: a long chain of sugar molecules hooked together in such a way as to be insoluble. If you treat this with nitric acid it breaks the chain in some places and adds in nitrate radicals, which are essentially oxydisers. A molecule of nitrocellulose has all the fuel and oxydiser it needs right there to burn, all you have to do is kick it a little to form a new arrangement. When it 'burns' it realeases energy, which kicks the next molecule, and so on. The reaction proceeds very fast because nothing has to move far. That's why it's a 'high' explosive.

In the old days they would nitrate cotton to a very high level, dissolve it, and reconstitute it to make an artificial silk called 'Rayon' (the modern stuff is different, I think). It was lovely. One time a young lady was wearing a gown of the stuff at a debutant ball and it got touched by a cigar. She died two days later, of massive burns.

After that they used only the minimal nitration that could just render the stuff soluble (unless they were making explosives). That turns out to be about 18% nitration; so one molecule in six in the solids on the guitar is a high explosive. It's too spread out to blow up, but it will burn enthusiastically (I've seen it!). Celluloid is the same stuff, and that's considered a hazardous material in shipping, I believe.

The solvents that actually dissolve nitrocellulose are ketones and things that you really don't want around. They are expensive, and very powerful solvents, so in use they are normally 'cut' with other organic solvents such as toluene, xylene, and so on. Toluene is about the _least_ toxic of the things that they put in lacquer thinner, and it's toxic in concentrations 1/10th of what you can smell. Even if you _can't_ smell it, it's dangerous. My brother used a form of nitro to 'dope' model airplanes, and when he came up for his draft physical (during the 'Nam era) he got a medical defferment because his kidneys are shot.

All of these solvents are about as volatile as gasoline, and mixtures of the solvent in air can be explosive, even without the nitro. Ditto the dust of the finish itself: even flour dust suspended in air can explode, and this stuff is much more flammible than flour.

I could go on about why the unstable nature of nitro makes it a bad bargain as a finish, but this is a safety discussion, and the bottom line is that this stuff is _not_ inherently 'safe'. You can use it in a relatively safe manner, just as we use gasoline and such on a daily basis. However, it's certinly not much _less_ flammible or toxic than gasoline, and you have to ask yourself what you'd want to do to make it possible to spray gasoline in the house and protect yourself and your family.

Hooboy. Reading all this makes me glad I'm french polishing my guitars. I painted some motorcycle fenders and tanks a couple years ago, using a two-part catalyzed automotive finish. I shot the stuff outside in my back yard, using a full-face respirator. That was very nasty stuff, too, and was enough for me.

Best,

Michael

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If you compare the MSDS information on Nitro versus a typical water-borne, you find that the health rating is the same - "2" - Respiratory, eye, skin irritant, etc.

Don't be fooled into thinking because it doesn't stink as much, water-bourne is safer. Long-term exposure can make some people just as sick. Be careful either way.

That was a good read, I think I'll stick to french polish too.

Funny thing is, when I was a 15 year old kid fresh out of school one of my first jobs was as a spray painter. Nobody mentioned any of this stuff then, nor were masks worn, couldn't have a cigarette hanging out of the corner of your mouth and wear a respirator at the same time. Luckily we weren't spraying nitro.

Alan, so the difference between gun cotton and nitro lacquer is a higher degree of substitution (higher nitration) in the gun cotton?

BTW, I believe it's gun cotton that's used in the big guns on USS Missouri, though I could be wrong.

Gee, all this talk gets me thinking of returning the quart of McFadden's I just bought at Grizzly.

So, is the KTM-9 any safer, is the alcohol that shellac dissolved in any safer, what's a guy to do/use.

Should we start another thread on which finishes we should be using and what about "industry standard"? How are the masses to be educated about the hazards of lacquer? At least Taylor and Larrivee are using something different, or are these just as harmful? Sounds like varnish may be the way to go, and the world will just have to be satisfied with not being able to fix there hair in the reflection of the guitar.

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[QUOTE=Glen H] If you compare the MSDS information on Nitro versus a typical water-borne, you find that the health rating is the same - "2" - Respiratory, eye, skin irritant, etc.

Don't be fooled into thinking because it doesn't stink as much, water-bourne is safer. Long-term exposure can make some people just as sick. Be careful either way.

[/QUOTE]

Quite. Always keep finish away from your body. Thing is, tuolene (part of/main component in laquer thinner) is far, far nastier than water. The airborne component/smell travels further, gets everywhere. There's a HUGE difference between spraying Nitro in a home-shop environment (or out a window, with backdraft, say) and spraying Waterbased stuff, if only because the cleanup liquids expose you to less noxious materials. The finish itself is one thing (and that's what gets the '2' rating), the solvents another.

Whatever you atomize, or turn into dust, you want to avoid getting it on your skin or, god forbid, in your lungs.

Shellac's non-toxic (short of alcohol poisoning) if dissolved in grain alcohol (check your chewing gum/medication contents list; many contain shellac for the shiny coating), if it's in denatured stuff, once again, it's dangerous. Solvents are nasty, nasty things, so replacing them with non-hazardous (or at least less hazardous) alternatives like water or pure grain alcohol (which isn't really safe, but safer than most things) is, in my book, a step forward.

I don't know enough about Polyesters (which is what I think Larrivee and Taylor use) to really comment, but my impression was that the catalysts are seriously nasty, but the solvents not *quite* as evil. Best to let someone who knows more chime in there.Mattia Valente38636.206724537

I AM CONVINCED. THANK YOU ALL FOR THE SAVING INFO. Sounds like this stuff should should never be used in a home, let alone a shop.

If I use KTM9, I am confused re bluish tint because of oppposite views. Help?

Also stated here not to spray any finish with pilot near. I have gas water-heater in basement-with KTM a problem?

Any water-based you like better than KTM?

KTM is not a likely fire hazard as a vapor. I believe the solids will burn if exposed to a flame but the vapor will not combust. Toluene, MEK, DA, PGA, all have highly combustible vapors. All you French polisher out there, I am one also, While shellac is 100% non-toxic. the solvents are toxic. even 100% pure grain alcohol is likely to cause liver damage or alcohol poisoning if improperly used. It is my opinion that no finish is any safer than the precaution taken to apply it.