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Lacquering Problems


yorks5stringer
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Am I doing missing something obvious here? 

I tinted my neck and headstock with Ntiro lacquer then went over with clear. No issues except I put on the wrong decal so decided to sand it off and retint with a water-based guitar tint and spray with poly lacquer. As I'd sprayed nitro over poly originally I assumed the reverse would work?

So sanded down the headstock face, removed decal and retinted with amber tint. Let dry, attached decal, left overnight and when I sprayed the lacquer ( same can as I used for something else that worked) there were places where the lacquer was almost repelled from the headstock face leaving gaps. I thought maybe I'd got some silicone lube off the tuner gears on it ( but how had it got there under the lacquer?) so sanded the headstock down again leaving the decal area which was OK. Cleaned it with nitro thinners thoroughly and just had another go with poly lacquer and same thing has happened. What is going on?  I don't want to have to sand it all off again and redo the decal. If the headstock face is contaminated maybe I could glue on some very thin light wood veneer, tint it and try again. This would be a ball-ache as I'm trying to just re-do the face and not touch the rest of the headstock and a thin laminate may need trimming which could affect the headstock sides.

Any ideas please..?

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Generally speaking spraying poly over Nitro is not a good idea. Nitro will out gas and shrink for a long time after sprayed. It never really cures like poly does as Nitro can always be dissolved.

So that could well be your problem. What poly are you using?

Moving forward I'd suggest cleaning as throughly as you can then a light coat of shellac in between (which sticks to just about anything).

edit: in between=before continting with topcoats.

Edited by Manton Customs
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I sanded the previously nitro'd headstock face down to bare wood, then used the water-based tint which went on fine. The Poly is Wilkinsons... but it was fine on another HB headstock face where I reshaped the 'hook', sanded it and gave it a few coats( granted poly on poly).

I did clean the whole headstock face with nitro thinners before my second go  of tint, then lacquer.

 

Thought I'd save some time and money by not re-doing  headstock in nitro but by using existing  clear poly and water based tint.... should have known better!

Edited by yorks5stringer
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Right, have found out what the issue is; when I replaced the Tuners after tinting the neck in the original build, I put a tiny touch of silicone lube on the screw threads for the Tuners. Subsequently this has seeped into the wood, as the pattern of where the lacquer is now not sticking is where the screw threads  are lined up. As I have already cleaned the headstock off once with thinners, I don't think I can remove any more silicon. Hopefully I'll be able to glue on a very thin veneer and proceed from there...unless shellac will provide a barrier?

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