Newbie, looking for help with lacquer finish

[Tom nilsen]

Hi, I have a nice vintage guitar from the 70s, I bought it unfinished, basically it was stripped and sanded, not sure why but that's how I found it. It is a doubleneck copy of a Gibson and needs a "Heritage Cherry Red" finish, I was thinking of doing a lacquer finish, but not sure how to get the heritage red and where to get it ? All wanted...

Thanks...

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Tom,

I moved your thread to the Musical Instrument forum where it is more appropriate. If you don't get answers here, start another thread in the Project Finishing" Forum.

The "Forum Technical Support" forum is where members start threads if they are having difficulties functioning within SawMillCreek forums.

[John Coloccia]

The basic recipe is dark grain filler (dark walnut seems to be a good choice), and cherry red tinted lacquer. You can get the proper transtint shades through stewmac. You may need to experiment a bit. Some people put a LITTLE red in the filler.

Check out Reranch for lots of guitar refinishing information and techniques. Also, you can pick up Dan Erlewine's guitar finishing book from StewMac...LOTS of different recipes in there.

[Tom nilsen]

Thanks, I'll be checking out Stewmac and Reranch for what they have, I'm hoping I can find a reasonably easy way to get a good finish on the guitar.

[george wilson]

I only use nitrocellulose lacquer. Likely this is the type lacquer your guitar originally has. Acrylic has a cool look because it's resin is blue. Nitro has a yellow resin. I use Star lacquer,which is a very pretty lacquer,but I ordered it from the factory in quantity. Behlen I didn't care for. I used Behlen on a classical guitar once,and found that the lacquer absorbed the colors from the rosette,and the roster "drifted" a ghost sideways some!! I had to strip it. No other lacquer ever did this. Sealing over the guitar better would have helped,but it was in the 60's and I can't recall what I did back then. Martin at that time used Sherwin Williams nitro,which I guess you could still get them to order. A SW salesman who supplied their lacquer advised me of this.

Yes,Gibson always used dark walnut filler. By the way,I haven't found an aerosol can of shading lacquer that had a decent amount of tint in it,but I haven't tried all the colors. I make my own colored lacquers using Orasol German dyes. They are the most
light fast. All their colors DO NOT dissolve in lacquer thinner,though.