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Gonna be spraying some nitro finish on a burl veneer pretty soon. Any advice?

Im about to go through with some pore filler just to level out small irregularities (I got pretty lucky with this burl in the fact that theres no holes or anything like that) but I think Ill put that on hold until I learn more about sealing with epoxy. How do you seal with epoxy? Do you literally just mix up a batch of 60 minute an wipe it on with an old credit card or something to insure that you get a nice thin, level coat? does this affect tone? any general advice about this for of sealing? Thanks for your help by the way! -Alex

Hey Alex,

Go to the tutorials section of the forum and look for Todd Stock's tutorial on pore filling with epoxy. There was also a thread on the main forum a couple of months ago that had good info on how to avoid some pitfalls with epoxy. Search for epoxy pore fill and use Kim in the author field.

Steve

Or you could pore fill as originally planned, but be sure to get ALL the residue sanded off after it dries. This'll be easier of you wipe it off the surface after it starts getting cloudy and dull looking. You might have to do two passes with either pore filler or epoxy. With pore filler, you also have an opportunity to stain the burl if you're inclined. After it's all leveled and sanded (or buffed clean with 0000 steel wool) you can seal it with a spit coat of shellac. Then shoot your nitro. I'd show you a pic of some nice finished burl on a headstock, but it's on a computer that happens to be in the shop for service this weekend. If you're curious, and if the thread is still alive Tuesday or Wednesday, I'll post it for you.

If you go epoxy I would recommend System 3's SB112 over Z-Poxy. SB112 is completely clear when cured, most other epoxies are not.

_________________
Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

Just a thought,
do a few tests on some scrap burl with lacquer, then try a wipe on poly finish.
It might make it bling more.
I'm doing finish samples on any wood I haven't finished before.

Thanks for all the wonderful advice guys. I ended up checking out that tutorial by Tom Stock in the tutorials section of the forum and mimicked what he did. I mixed up some epoxy (he used z-poxy) and used a mini squeege to pull it across the surface. I'm not sure what the difference between regular epoxy and z-poxy is (I know that z-poxy is just a type of epoxy) though. I noticed that the z-poxy that he used in his video was much more liquidy than the epoxy that I used. Why is z-poxy preferred among luthiers (I've seen guys talking about it in the past on the forum). Here a pix of the burl right after I finished applying the epoxy. The guitar is a neck thru tele. Soft curly maple neck, honduran mahogany wings, walnut burl veneer on top, and an ebony fretboard. It will have a schaller floyd rose, a p-rails in the bridge position, a prs p-90 in the neck position, and Im wiring up a four was rotary switch to give me alot of tonal optionns from the p-rail. The p-rails volume control will be a push-pull pot. The in position will be 250k ohm pot for some thick, warm, milky tones and the out position will most likely be 1 meg ohm for some killer distortion (might go with 750k ohm or 500k ohm. Im not really sure yet).