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As with everything else , It looks really good and may be the right answer. However the Durability is the only thing that cant be measured without time. I sincerely hope it does hold up . It looks really good .

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2000 pick strokes and barely any wear…

Therein lies the paradox. All the gigging guitarists I know, and their number dwindled mightily during COVID, would be hard pressed to scrape $2-3K together to buy a guitar. Taylor and Martin are the go-tos in this segment. And Reverb is bursting at the seams in the secondary market. Like many small builders I can't compete in this category.
So the paradox is finishing a guitar to look like a factory guitar and taking the associated risks handling it in hopes of selling to a working musician who can't afford it.
I'm not meaning to hijack the thread but I believe we should be building for tone and playability first. A high tech finish makes sense when 500 guitars a day are being built. But the easiest way to distinguish your guitars from high production shops is t-o-n-e. And I think you'd be hard pressed to find an experienced builder who feels poly or UV finished enhance the tone.

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That is indeed the quandary. I won’t know until i use it on a guitar. That said, at the very least the porefill is magic.

Yeah they are not my clientele either except for a few electric guitars I have built. But what I am also hearing in this finish that Ed is testing is that it is very easy to apply with a brush, is super fast, and apparently non toxic. That alone has got me hoping that this turns out well as a tone enhancing finish.

I love building guitars but I HATE finishing them and if that all works out I will definitely be giving this a try.

I do actually enjoy French Polishing but my arthritic elbows and wrists don't. Gettin' old, in fact today is my birthday, one more trip around the sun makes FP harder and harder

Happy Birthday!

Just a few thoughts... you can easily spray a guitar, neck and all, with 3/4 of a quart of nitro counting what goes airborne when spraying.
So, lets say 800 ml. At 13% solids by volume that should leave 104 ml. on the guitar when cured. At 100% solids you would have to use
no more than 100 ml to do the job. That's roughly 3.4 ounces. Seems doable. That's also assuming that the volume or amount is the only
tone killer, maybe or maybe not. The only way to know for sure is to do one and see what you think. .

These are great points, but I will push back gently. When you say we should be building for tone and playability first, there is a danger of thinking that we should be building for those two things exclusively, with no regard for durability, for holding up to normal wear and tear. I figure that is not what you mean, but there are folks who think that way, so I want to express a different perspective.

I think there are lots of players who are neither "working musicians" (are there many of those in the world, really?) nor people who only play guitar on the couch. There are plenty of folks who want a great sounding guitar that doesn't (as I have expressed before on the OLF) have to be babied like a Faberge egg. If I pay upwards of $5k USD for a guitar, then I really want the finish to stay looking good under normal wear and tear conditions. I want to be able to play it away from home without worrying about whether it will be damaged by bug spray or sunscreen. I want to open the case in cold weather without worrying about cracking the finish. That's the person I want to build for, not James Taylor, and not an ultra-rich dentist who just likes having the best of whatever she/he owns. I think we can stand to elevate the importance of durability just a smidge. Otherwise, we risk building Faberge eggs in the hope that we will capture that extra 0.001% of magic tone. Faberge eggs stay in the case a lot. More durable instruments get taken out into the world to be played, and isn't that what we want for our guitars?

So, I'm experimenting with a more durable finish than I have ever used before: Not the UV cure finish at issue in this thread, but a different UV cure finish. I think it speaks to my desire to build a really good sounding guitar (better than a factory guitar, I hope), but a durable one, too. Otherwise, the darn thing will probably stay in the case a lot, for fear that its delicate finish will get damaged.

I definitely agree that owners want a lot. They want the guitars to sound like there is no finish on there at all, but they also want the guitars to look as shiny as a new car. We are all going to hit a different spot on the spectrum of increasing tone at the expense of durability, or increasing durability at the expense of tone. I just think there is a spot on the spectrum for truly great sounding guitars that hold up well to normal wear and tear, and I think UV cured finishes hit that spot pretty well, when applied thin.

Exactly. I’ve done close the 300 guitars with satin finish and they all sound one way. I’ve had UV Poly, nitro, 2k urethane, and conversion varnish done, and they all sound distinctly different. Oh, and one in royallac. They each have a signature.

I build my budget line for tone alone with a thin satin and have had no complaints about durability in 12 years, only one potential client has mentioned it once, asking for UV poly and I turned him down, knowing that it would be a lesser guitar than what I normally do. Lots of folks seem to be able to get around it though, it just doesn't work for me…

Don, I appreciate the measured tone in your post. It proves that there can actually be a discussion on this forum rather than a flame war which, unfortunately, I see all too often on these very pages.
Rather than hijack this thread I will start another and let the discussion of this finish continue where it will.

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Stay with the happy people.
--Reynolds Large

Tom—

Yeah, well, your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries!!!

Sorry, just couldn’t resist.

I appreciate your perspective and thoughtful tone as well. Civil discourse is getting rarer and rarer.

Ni!

I came here for a good argument.

No you didn't

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Sorry, times up.

Interesting finish!
So someone correct me / teach me something.
There are a few things that could affect tone…
1- any added stiffness to the wood that the finish adds (not sure if there’s a word for that)
2- the mass / weight of any given thickness of the Finnish after applied…I assume this can be different for different finishes
What else would affect tone?


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One of the best comedy skits ever.

No Leave me before I taunt you A SECOND Time !

_________________
The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
The Taking Of Offense Is the Life Course Of The Stupid One !
Wanna Leave a Better Planet for our Kids? How about Working on BETTER KIDS for our Planet !
Forgiveness is the ability to accept an apology that you will probably NEVER GET
The truth will set you free , But FIRST, it will probably Piss you Off !
Creativity is allowing yourself to make Mistakes, Art is knowing which ones to Keep !
The Saddest thing anyone can do , is push a Loyal Person to the point that they Dont Care Anymore
Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
http://wiksnwudwerks.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/GatewayA ... rAssembly/

Snow…

1- correct IMO
2- also correct IMO, as well as the damping characteristics any particular finish has

1hr 40 elapsed time, 50 minutes of which were spent larking in the sun in the garden as it cured. I allowed a 5 minute cure window as the day is overcast.

I found it difficult to brush on the spruce for some reason, so I cut 50/50 with Everclear, and padded on 10 very thin flat coats.

Wet sanded 600/1000/1500/2000 and buffed. The sanding took the longest, the buffing took just a few minutes. I would definitely looking to power sand this stuff rather than wet sand. I only have 30 micron and kept cutting through my brushed panels yesterday. I think today I could have started with 1000 on the ROS and got away with it.

I got it very thin but forgot to measure the panel thickness unfortunately. I’m confident it’s in the 2-3 thou range. Tapping the test panel it seems largely transparent. The problem I’ve had with other finishes is the trebles getting stepped on. The test panel rings crisply. Can’t really know til I do a guitar with it which I don’t have time for.

I did burn through in a few small sections, so I’ll be able to test reparability tomorrow. Out of sunlight today, lol.

Looks quite good. Interesting that you can cut it in half like that and pad it on. If that is the case I'd be tempted to do the whole guitar like that.

Thanks for documenting this Ed!


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I’m mostly interested in the top. I feel there’s more leeway on the back and sides. Not that they’re not important but more they’re not AS important. So a few thou extra may not be a dealbreaker there, whereas it most definitely is on the top…

Anyway, this stuff padded on reasonably well. Unlike shellac, which flashes as the solvent disappears, with this stuff you can keep moving it around until you’re satisfied, so if there’s a missed spot or a spot with too much film that’s starting to bead or show signs of being too thick, you can work it around until satisfied and then cure it…basically this stuff is padding on the way I expected RoyalLac to do but didn’t…

Hey, anything to avoid learning how to French Polish…;)

Really appreciate your photos and descriptions of your process Ed.

Very promising product!