Alternative finishings...

Would these finishes be appropriate for top coating bodies and necks? Which one is better and why?

  • Varathane - sure, it's good stuff, but only for non-painted bodies

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Varathane - sure, it's good stuff for both painted and non-painted stuff

    Votes: 4 36.4%

  • Varathane - yeech, stay away!

    Votes: 1 9.1%

  • Varathane or Minwax - meh, carrots

    Votes: 1 9.1%

  • Minwax - sure, it's good stuff, but only for non-painted bodies

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Minwax - sure, it's good stuff for both painted and non-painted stuff

    Votes: 3 27.3%

  • Minwax - gak, stay away!

    Votes: 1 9.1%

  • Carrots

    Votes: 5 45.5%
  • Total voters
    11
nerkoids

nerkoids

Jan 3, 2014
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#1
All right. Recently went to my local Canadian Tire and came across these two products. Both seem to be water-borne 3x type thick polyurethane durable enough for floors... so they should be pretty good for guitar bodies and necks?

Water-borne poly, really thick, self-levelling, doesn't yellow (going by what they're saying on the can and bottle) I opened up the cap of the Minwax one, and it smelled a lot like the water-based Miniwax I used for my last P-bass build, and that stuff turned out great.

So my question is this, fine luthiers and craftspeople - have any of you tangoed with this stuff, and if you did, how were the results? If you did use this stuff, or know of this stuff, and knowing they are both polyurethane - would you recommend either of them on natural/stained and/or painted parts?

These are going for 29-32 dollars each for roughly 1 L, which I think is a pretty good value if you're going to be doing a series of guitars (or if you have some furniture that needs some glossing up)
IMG_20180825_113824.jpg


IMG_20180825_114010.jpg
 
#7
nerkoids said:
All right. Recently went to my local Canadian Tire and came across these two products. Both seem to be water-borne 3x type thick polyurethane durable enough for floors... so they should be pretty good for guitar bodies and necks?

Water-borne poly, really thick, self-levelling, doesn't yellow (going by what they're saying on the can and bottle) I opened up the cap of the Minwax one, and it smelled a lot like the water-based Miniwax I used for my last P-bass build, and that stuff turned out great.

So my question is this, fine luthiers and craftspeople - have any of you tangoed with this stuff, and if you did, how were the results? If you did use this stuff, or know of this stuff, and knowing they are both polyurethane - would you recommend either of them on natural/stained and/or painted parts?

These are going for 29-32 dollars each for roughly 1 L, which I think is a pretty good value if you're going to be doing a series of guitars (or if you have some furniture that needs some glossing up)
View attachment 3128523

View attachment 3128525
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I would stick with the regular formula, not the triple thick floor stuff.
 
#8
There is a whole thread on Waterbase Finishes devoted to this, but I'll give you my shorthand. I used the Varathane Heavy Use Formula Gloss:
Rust-Oleum 200261H 1/2-Pint Satin Interior Waterborne Diamond Polyurethane
It's also available in spray cans, but getting harder to find as they have newer fomulas.

I tinted the Varathane jet black using the Stewmac Colortone Pigment for Waterbase:
ColorTone Liquid Pigment for Waterbase Lacquer | stewmac.com
It's the only pigment I found that mixed perfectly with Varathane and produced a Jet Black, opaque finish in a reasonable number of coats.

I sprayed it on with one of these:
HVLP Spray Gun Kit
Not the best tool for the job, but it worked. I had a lot of trouble figuring out the right combination of mix, speed, distance, etc, and no real braintrust to draw from. If I do this again, I'll probably get a small compressor and decent HVLP gun.

You can see the whole interminable blow-by-blow build process here, skip to the last 10 pages or so to see the paint process:
The Hossenfeffer Bass Build

Here it is after the buffing process just finished. By no means perfect, but for my first paint job, good enough.


A lot of Luthiers are using Pro Finisher and Minwax Modified Oil finishes with great success. The finish on my bass is harder and more scratch resistant than traditional Nitro, but less resistant than Poly. The lack of poisonous fumes was well worth the compromise. Its NOT like spraying nitro or enamel, so if you are comfortable with that, and have the protective gear, go for it, but if you are starting from scratch, go waterbase, a total no-brainer. The whole industry is heading that way, and the technology has advanced enough I see no good reason to use VOC based finishes any more. We all have to breathe the same air, might as well reduce the clouds of evil vapor.
 
#10
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#11
^^^^^What she said, it's surprising how thick you have to lay it on to avoid "burning through" while you are level wetsanding. One little overzealous pass and its toast. WB finishes like Varathane don't burn in to previous coats like nitro, though supposedly some of the newer WB formulations do. That's one big downside of WB so far. One coat would probably work if all you are shooting for is glossy orangepeel, not the desired end result for most.
 
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#12
mapleglo said:
I'm sure this is a fine product. I have used Varathane finishes in the past with good results. Just don't think you can get away with "one coat". It's going to be more like 20 coats, and you're still going to need to wet sand and polish.
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Oh, it's not about doing it in one coat. I figured since it's 3X it would be less prone to running and dripping, better self-leveling and doing each coat in less passes. A can of this stuff is only 1-2 CND more than their regular WB poly.
 
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#13
Try it out and let us know! The holy grail of finishing has always been getting compressor and gun level finish out of a rattle can, but I’ve yet to see it in reality. If you don’t mind a little more work wetsanding, maybe a rattle can is fine, the technology keeps getting better.
 
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#14
Gilmourisgod said:
Try it out and let us know! The holy grail of finishing has always been getting compressor and gun level finish out of a rattle can, but I’ve yet to see it in reality. If you don’t mind a little more work wetsanding, maybe a rattle can is fine, the technology keeps getting better.
Click to expand...
Well, I don't have a garage or workshop - I'm an apartment dweller - so no-odour poly finishings appeals to my sense of wanting to respect the people I live with and my neighbours :D. As for the color coats, I've been watching some youtube videos of a guy who painted his guitars with the acrylic paint one finds at Wal-Mart and Michael's and he got some really great results. He used tru-oil for his finishing (not interested in that stuff, to be honest)
 
#15
I have an unheated garage, but I built a plastic spray booth and managed to paint guitars in it using a small space heater, a box fan, and some air filters. You can build a mini spray booth of sorts using a bathroom exhaust fan, some plastic sheet, dryer vent, and a couple HVAC filters. There are a bunch of examples on YouTube, so it’s fully do-able, even in an apartment. Using WB finish eliminates most of the toxicity and all the flammability, so no explosion proof fans required, and very little smell. You can vent right out the window.

Pretty crude, but you get the idea.
 
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#16
Well, I finally tried this stuff:
334445-va-triple-thick-gloss-en-jpg.jpg


And it's actually quite good. It didn't take 20 coats. It took only 3. Despite it being water-borne, it does gas off for the better part of 48 hours. But when it does, it's pretty glossy and rock-hard.

When sprayed on, it does act a lot like lacquer, it self-levels and it de-bubbles itself fairly well. Like most polys it does orange-peel when you try to dry it too quickly, though, but wow oh wow, it's got a great shine already to it.
 
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