When can I buff laquer finished items?

[Aaron Wingert]

I'm making a mahogany pepper mill and matching salt shaker for a friend's wedding gift.

I applied teak oil to them to give them a little deeper color, let that dry, then started applying multiple coats of deft gloss spray laquer. Coat number 4 is drying right now, and I'm thinking it'll get a couple more coats. The finish is looking good but I would like to really shine it up on the Beall buffer to get it as nice looking as possible.

Two questions...

1) Should I wait a while for the laquer to fully cure before buffing? A couple days? A week? Wait until I can't smell the finish?

2) Should I use the white diamond wheel only? I'm thinking the tripoli wheel might be too agressive for this. Carnauba wax wheel afterward or not?

Thanks all. Since I normally make duck calls I'm not too well-versed with the more conventional finishing processes.

[Aaron Wingert]

Or is buffing laquer a bad idea???

[Dennis Ford]

The time for lacquer to fully cure varies with application thickness and weather, I like to wait a week before buffing. You can buff the next day if done very carefully (low speed and low pressure). Regardless of how cured it is, you should not be too aggressive.

[Jim Underwood]

Or is buffing laquer a bad idea???

Oh no. Not bad at all. You can get a glass like finish on laquer. Laquer normally isn't finished curing for at least 72 hours. I've had newly laquered items bond together after 24 hours of curing...

[Bernie Weishapl]

I always let my lacquer cure for a minimum of a week or longer. Longer IMHO is better. I agree just don't get heavy handed with it. A lot of turners buff right away after it dries for several hours but have found it doesn't work well or look good but that is just me.

[Alan Trout]

Aaron

How I judge how well lacquer is cured is very simple. I smell the piece. If it still smells like lacquer it is still off gassing and curing. I usually wait a week and I have had really heavy coated items that I have waited a month. The more cured it is the better the finish turns out and the less risk of burning through.

Alan

[Aaron Wingert]

Thanks all! I'm assuming the white diamond wheel is the way to go?

[Ryan Baker]

It may be too late, but I wouldn't touch that with white diamond. If you haven't used a pore filler on mahogany, you still have lots of grain pores (a half dozen coats of spray lacquer is no where near enough to fill the pores without grain filler). If you buff that with white diamond, you are going to have white compound get into every little pore, leaving white specs that you will never get rid of. Even if you buff it with the brown compound, you will probably end up with a nice shiny surface with pores all over in it. But there's no way around that other than an initial grain filler or enough lacquer coat/sand back passes to fill in the pores.

Lacquer dries to the touch very quickly, but takes a long time to really cure. Two weeks to two months is on the short end for a finish to really cure. If you wait any less than a week before you buff you will have to be really careful (light touch) with the buffing. It is very easy to buff through the finish, or heat it up enough to "smear" it and make a mess. The other issue is that lacquer will continue to shrink for a couple months. If you buff it too early, you will probably need to rebuff it again in a couple months.

[Ken Glass]

Aaron,
Even after I let a turning sit for 8-10 days after several coats of Lacquer, I don't buff very hard and produce heat and much friction, or the finish will burn and deteriorate. A light buffing has the best results IMHO.

[Karl Card]

Just as the others have said, the harder or more cured the lacquer is the finished product is so glassy smooth and it is just simply amazing.

It is such a different finish that it will show up in a picture as if the item were coated with glass..

On my pens that i use lacquer on I let it harden and use 0000 steel wool to get any slight imperfections out and then use a small amount of EEE cream and man it is so silky smooth and clear. The time to cure and dry is also probably dependent on the brand of lacquer and whether it is water or oil based. Just as others have stated to it depends on how thick the layers are. Several fine layers, IMHO, cure nicer and faster than one thick layer.