Nitro Guitar Finish Tutorial - Part 1: Preparation & Grain Filler
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- Опубликовано: 11 фев 2018
- How to create a perfect nitrocellulose guitar finish. In the first part of this tutorial I will show you how to prepare a guitar body (or neck) for finishing. I'm using a body that requires grain filling, since the quality of this job really determines the quality of your finish in the end. Take your time in the preparation stage and you will be rewarded with a perfect, high gloss shine.
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Products used in this tutorial (I am not affiliated with any of these stores):
Nitrocellulose lacquer (UK/EU): www.manchesterguitartech.co.u...
Nitrocellulose lacquer (USA/world): www.stewmac.com/Materials_and...
Polishing compounds (Stewmac): www.stewmac.com/Materials_and...
Polishing compound (Rupes): www.amazon.com/Rupes-Diamond-...
Grain filler (EU): www.hoelleinshop.com/Zubehoer...
Grain filler alternative (USA/world): www.stewmac.com/Materials_and...
Tack cloth (UK/EU): www.manchesterguitartech.co.u...
For detailed questions or other inquiries, mail me at info@lonestarguitars.nl.
Also, check out the Lone Star Guitars website:
www.lonestarguitars.nl
I've never had a hand explain something to me to beautifully
Perfect in-depth guide! You are a MASTER!
Thank you so much for these videos. The details seriously helped me with my hobby builds! A fresh sea foam green jazz bass and a mean metallic black P bass. Respect and nice work at Lone Star Guitars
You have saved me SO MUCH TIME! Thank you for your in-depth video and all the information you spoken of!
Man, I love your series. I'm going straight to part 2
Such a great tutorial,.....heading for part 2
Just perfect. Thank you for all the Details and very good explanation
Nice video. thanks. Waiting for the next part!
That grain on this was amazing
I've been reading the Stew Mac book on finishing, and this video has been very helpful with the visual hands on.
Great tutorial and very informative. It shows all the hidden costs and time to do a DIY guitar properly. Happy I watched it before buying a kit which I won't be buying now.
This video is a god send, thank you !
Wow! This was one of if not the best tutorial. Most people just shoot their videos while doing the painting and take forever without a clear structure. You basically put together an actual lecture with audiovisuals.
Awesome tutorial series. Instant sub. Thank you.
Excellent demo, thanks, I'm going to try and use this method on a worn patch on a strat body.
nice video. waiting for part 2 :)
Very informative and well done. Thank you!
I’m getting ready to do a finish on a swamp ash Tele body like this one in your video, great video and step by step explanations on what to do! You probably saved me about 8 hours of sanding with this video LOL! 🤙
Really useful and informative, thanks!
Amazing video!!
Finally everything explained clearly! Thanks a lot!
Thanks!
A very nice looking finish, great work. This is a great tutorial for first timers like me, great tips and remarks about safety and procedure.
Also you are nice to point out a great supplier for nitro who cares about their customers a lot.
If you ever make a buttercream nitrocellulose finish, be sure to capture the process on your channel =D
Great explanation! Thank you so much
Nice video, very informative.
That body has fantastic grain! WoW!!
Great lesson and show, thank you.
Great vid, thx!
excelente gracias!, excellent tutorial, very clear and simple like the nitro.
Great presentation. I feel confident about refinishing my tatty ash bodied strat now. Thanks!
Excellent video!
Thank you!
Wow excellent work and excellent video thank you for sharing
You're welcome! Thanks for watching.
Thanx for the info about liquid grain filler.
great information!
Most helpful thanks
Great tutorial thank you very much
Thank you, and you're welcome!
Invredible video Thank you so much.
Part 2 is now available! Thanks for your patience and I hope you enjoy it!
Amazing video really !!!!! Just a question which product are you using at 09:22 ? Is is the sanding sealer ?
Hello guy I'm from Brazil, and wow, the way you explain is awesome, very detailed and very helpful video.. I will subscribe now tks
You is a finishing scientist hahahaha, you apply the techniques very well... Good job
Good I need to do a sunburst!!
Hey man, great job, really unbelievable work you did there! Thank you for a such a great service, helping the rest of us learn how to do this that is, I really appreciate it, you have a new subscriber! I wanted to ask one quick question, as perhaps I missed it somewhere in the three videos, but how many cans should I buy? I notice you have one can of sanding sealer, one can of primer, one can of the color, and one can of the clear gloss. This will be the first time I attempting this, so should I get two cans of the color? Thanks again!
Great video, thanks! I’m about to do this on an Explorer-type kit body.
That's a great project! Best of luck.
Thank you
thanks a lot man !!!
You're very welcome! Part 2 is very close to being finished now!
Just started my own project using an old infinity tele me and my brother abused as teenagers, gonna use your technique.
Hi, thank you for for sharing this great video! A short question, if possible. I've never used Aeronaut sanding sealer before. If I want to use spirit based wood stains, can they be successfully applied AFTER using this kind of sealer?
Nice video, thanks, clear and helpful. One question: the grain filler that I have (Rustins) comes as a paste and needs to be thinned down with white spirit. Is that what you did? If so, what proportion of white spirit to grain filler did you use? Many thanks.
I have used Aquacoat filler for a few instruments. It is really easy to work with, dries quickly, but I would recommend not using it on very dark woods. It will "ghost" if you have are talking about very porous wood. It's perfect for sound board woods, however.
Great video, thanks!!! What if you want a textured surface that DOES pop the grain visually, sort of like Novo guitars with their solid color on sand-blasted bodies, with almost 3D texture? Could you spray nitro directly on sanded wood? Or wood with minimum sealer, but no fill?
This is excellent - just what I was looking for. I’m refinishing a Baja telecaster. I’ve removed all of the original finish (it was really thick!) and it’s now down to the bare wood. Would I need to do the grain filler stage, or should that still be ok after removing the original finish?
Thank You for this amazing video!
Can you send a different link to the wood filler? The one in Europe is only in German and in the USA link the product doesn't exist.
Hello ! Nice video ! How many times do you wait after applying the grain filler before sanding it ?
0:00 - Intro
1:04 - Supplies
5:03 - Surface Prep
5:27 - Wood Grain
6:35 - Grain Filler
9:00 - Raising the Grain
10:08 - Rounding Sharp Edges
10:19 - Applying Grain Filler
12:26 - Sanding the Grain Filler
14:48 - Closing
You re job is great ! please what is the mark of the grain filler do you used in this video ?
How would you recommend someone achieve a semi transparent gloss finish (closed pore). I’m going for a finish that looks almost like a solid color but upon close close inspection (in perfect lighting) one should be able to see the grain. I have the color picked out and my finisher/painter uses poly.
I love you. And I mean it lol. Having a pro finish your guitar can cost hundreds. Sometimes even close to 1000 in the case of rare exotic guitars like rics!
Sunburst please on a Fender Precision bass. Thank you very much for this.
Sunburstttttt
Halfway through and we finally see the guitar
It’s so pretty just with the grain! I would almost consider making it naked with a nitro coat only
Translucent is great compromise.
Thanks for the video. I used an oil based fillet on an alder body I’m doing and when I went to do the sand and sealer step, there are streaks that show up after sanding and wiping down with tack cloth. When I put mineral spirits everything looks clean but these steaks are at the edges of the body and it looks generally uneven in the sides. My question is if there’s a way to tell if the sealer had been sanded through too much or not enough. I put two coats on, letting each dry for a couple hours before sanding and wiping down again. Any thoughts?
I’m doing a semitransparent blonde color coat and I don’t want to continue with it if it’s not going to be uniform grain underneath. It’s not major just not totally clean if that makes sense.
Any thoughts about how perfectly clean the grain of the body needs to be to show up consistent under the color coat?
Thanks
Thanks so much for this tutorial. After watching this, most other videos on this topic feel like makeshift somehow 😅
Question: for a transparent finish with stain. Do I apply stain to the naked wood, then grain fill, and one more layer of stain? Or better mix the stain in with the grain filler?
Any update on the blackguard style finish? I'm looking at building a blackguard and would like to know the differences. Thanks!!
Hi there! First of all, great tutorial(s), very complete!!
I was thinking of doing a relic'd finish; I specially love the chipped kind of relic'd finish. I've read from guys that say you should apply the nitro directly in a 400 grit body to those who claim a similar process shown on your videos. Some say primer will do exactly the opposite i'm looking for, avoid chipping from happening. And, B, I was thinking on applying a waterbased tint to dark the showing wood after the relic job; won't sealer, filler and primer prevent that from happening since wood won't be able to absorb? Many, many thanks, Alex.
If that's what you're going for I would recommend first staining/dyeing the wood to get it a little darker. Then apply sealer. Skip the primer. Then apply color and clear. You can still get it to chip with the primer, but it won't look very nice since the primer is usually white or gray (and that will show beneath the chipped color/clear coats). Good luck!
Topvideo, dank hiervoor! Een vraag: na het vullen van de porien is de grainfiller (zelfde soort als inde video) wat vlekkerig opgedroogd. Ook na het gladschuren met 240 blijven er donkerdere en lichtere plekken over, ook al zit de nerf vol. Blijf je dat zien bij een clear finish? Mijn vervolgstappen zijn clear nitro primer en clear nitro gloss. Moet ik ernaar streven om de filler overal op dezelfde kleur te hebben? Dank!
Hello, i've used "ancien ebeniste" wood filler (fondur), and when applying it it doesn't raise the grain like aero naut, any idea why ? (my wood filler is liquide and looks like milk.
Also, i've seen a video of you explaining how to check nitrocellulosis, i've tried your method and thought it didn't work (i couldn't see any check at first) but putting it under a light (almost paralell to the body surface) revealed a lot of really thin nitro check ! tried to fill them with shoe polish mixed with dark oak wood tint but it doesn't help to see them without any proper light inclinaison... any advice ?
What if I want the wood natural but darker than natural ash. Do you recommend gel stains? When do you apply the stain? Before or after the filler?
Thank you! Your video clarified so much 'order of operations' questions for me. I'm planning to stain my body, so would my next steps be to apply the stain then top coats?
You mean color stain and then apply a clear coat? Stay away from anything that can be cleaned with water unless you're an expert because the oil based paints work so much better than water based one.
Thanks so much for this video! I'm hoping to build my own guitars some day. One question: How do you clean your sandpaper during the grain filler sand down? You said that's important.
Use compressed air or rag.
Hey Lone Star, May I apply this wisdom over a sunburst? I want it to naturally wear off could you give me any if not all advice?
If I’m staining the guitar, do I fill grain before or after staining? Also do you grain fill a maple neck?
Terpentine from De Parel. Love to see some Dutch quality products being used in the US. De Parel makes great quality paints and stains as well.
Edwin Winter je hoort toch wel dat deze vent nederlands is
@@fow8780, I'm sorry?
What is the exact difference between the medium polishing compound and the swirl remover? In what way you use them differently?
That's great tutos !! thank you !
Please, how do you proceed preferably to have a less glossy result ? like a bit satin, aged on surf green solid color like that ?
And how do you mix tints and lacquer, to make custom solid color tints please ?
You can buy nitro in gloss, semi-gloss and satin finish. Tints come in liquid or powder form and you just add them to the clear lacquer mix well and then fill your air gun with that mix and spray away. If it's too hot where you're spraying you might want to add reducer to the mix to prolong the drying process so the paint has a chance to level out on its own before it dries. Otherwise once the paint hits the body it will be too dry to stick as it will dry out in the air before it hits the body.
awesome video thanks for posting, how do you go about sanding the sides and edges of the guitar after applying the grain filler?
Good question, I would guess sanding it by hand not using the wood block. ✌🏼
Hello, I wanted to paint my guitar a solid color finish and wanted to ask you about a specific product. There is a White Vinyl Sealer by colortone that works as a sealer that is white. I guess you can consider it as a two in one (sealer and white primer). Is this product equally as sand-able as the sanding sealer? Would it work the same as the clear sanding sealer you use on a solid color finish?
Part 2!
Working on it! I've got quite a few projects going on at the moment, but I'm definitely trying to get part 2 up as soon as possible. Thanks for watching.
Nice action. My guitartech made me a solid telecaster spruce body, he said its a 2-component "nitro" laquer. Im not an expert, but i realise that its pretty soft, even after 2 months after spraying. You can literary leave your finger nail markf in a surface when you push harder. Is that normal? Should i spray maybe one coat os "something" to protect that fragile surface?
How would you go about preparing the wood if you were to want to do a relic BLK1 style? Sandblast the wood? No primer?
I'm going to spray nitro on my tele. Daphne blue. And now I'm watching your videos every day. Detail by detail. Now I have the tele body prepared for white primer. But is there a problem if I didn't use a grain filler but only sanding sealer which was not in the spray. I put a 7 coats of this and sanded it. Now it's smooth like a glass. But there are 2 tiny scratches and I can't sand them out. Is it a problem for next steps? All the other surface is really smooth. Thank you for your videos 🙏
Thanks, this video was super informative. Would you recommend using grain filler on a new, never-finished basswood body?
Usually basswood does not require grain filler. But if it's a factory made body it probably will need some sanding to get it smooth enough to start spraying nitro. After that you could just spray a thin coat of sealer and see how flat/smooth it turns out.
I have a sunburst strat with polyurethane. I wanna give it a surf green nitro finish but I wanna preserve the sunburst under it so it shows when the nitro chips. Is it okay if I just sand the poly a little and the jump to applying nitro?
Great video - thank you! What/How do you clean your sandapaper with while sanding the filler off ?
I use a stiff brush to rub it off. Works very well (as long as your sandpaper is on a sanding block).
Where to find nitrocellulose guitar finish in Canada, can not be shipped from the US?
If you are refinishing a guitar that was already painted do you still need to use grain filler?
I bought an unfinished Tele body from AllParts a few years ago, and I do not recall if it was ash or alder. How can I tell the difference, and does that make a difference on whether I use sealer on it?
I am going for a solid color gold finish from ReRanch
? Am I correct in thinking that after you use grain filler you have to use paint because stain or dye will no longer soak into the wood ?
I do prefer Mahogany over ash, the pores are smaller and the grain is less wide and rough. Still takes 3-4 coats, but I don't just lather it on like you do, I squeegee when I apply, leaving less on the wood top to sand off. Less time sanding is always a good thing. But I see why you had to brush it on the body you were showing us!
Can I add grain filler on top of the primer? Seems I didn’t apply enough grain filler
If you set the playback speed to x1.5 it sounds like it's Jesse Eisenberg
I tried this and it is pretty accurate.
Lol. It's that speaking fast because he is so much smarter than the rest of us, and having to slow it a touch for our benefit... But he'll accomodate us begrudgingly and patronizing. That's what I get fro! "Eisenburg" speak.
LMAOOO WTF
And if you listen to it at .5 speed, it sounds like my buddy Daniel, who is a heroin junkie.
Seriously.
What will happen if I skip applying filler? I kinda want to fill the grain at the same time have a shiny look for the finish. Is this possible with this tecnique?
Thank you for this. I’ve had questions about this exact thing. If you were hand painting a design what kind of paint do you recommend?
You're welcome! I'd probably go with an acrylic paint. It usually goes well with nitro. You can do the hand painting with the acrylic and then finish it off with a coupe of nitro clear coats.
Question, won't an N95 dust mask work okay? I understand those can protect us from viruses which are way smaller than nitro aerosol particles?
Great!!! Could you post here a just clearcoat finish without color paint? I'll start this job and liked very much your tutorial. Thank you.
Grain fill and pile on clear nitro coats until you have the necessary thickness built up to what you desire.
I've been told since my guitar is American basswood it does not require grain filler, just sanding sealer. What grit and smoothness does the body need to be at before applying the sealer? 600?
Can I use acrylic paint over the grain filler?
Am I the only.person in love with that ash grain?
Thanks so much for the vid - the Aeronaut filler is by the far the best and easiest I’ve used so far. Still having some issues with some tiny end grain pores in some spots though. No matter what I use (Rustins/water based/Aeronaught) and how lightly I sand, they keep popping up unfilled in my finish. I’ve retouched them so many times! Should I use a wood filler instead, or as I’ve seen someone suggest a car body filler such as Bondo? It’s driving me nuts but I want to get it right. Thanks!
Instead of using bondo use thinned out epoxy specifically Zpoxy for rc airplanes to soak the glass mats in when they join wing halves together. They have the thin version and it sands really easy. Kind of expensive like 15 bucks for 4oz or something like that. You mix the hardener with the resin and apply it with a credit card on the wood body in thin layer. Wait for it to dry then sand it to level the surface. Apply more coats when you see shiny spots. Sand until no shiny spots seen. It's probably the best filler ever but also very messy.
So am I right in thinking that alder, being a closed grain wood, doesn’t need any wood filler?
How long do you wait after applying grain filler to start sanding?
So in alder body you recommend to not use grain filler?