Odd Holiday Depression

[Patrick from Davis]

I am a little bit depressed.  It is not that the weather is getting colder, the days shorter, or that the fog has rolled in.  The finish that was supposed to be ready on the tele I have been waiting forever on looks like it has a rash.  Sort of.  I have been polishing it, and in one spot it is odd.  There are no pictures of it, because the camera stinks and never shows the problem.  I have tried every angle and lighting combo I can come up with, but nothing.  So, to describe it a bit...  It is Deft Semi Gloss, at the second leveling point, looked great, I mean really good, have the car polish and ... if you look at it after a polishing, something is not right.  After you take the Turtle Wax White Car Polish off by rubbing it looks like a rash, but inverted.  Not a color problem, but similar to shaving rash.  Inverted.  Not everywhere, just one spot about the size of an egg.  I am going to work on it more tomorrow, along with any suggestions, and see what comes of it.

 

[-CB-]

Deft Semi Gloss -

Get some good 600 wet/dry paper.  Get some Naphtha.  Get some Formby's lemon oil.  Get some Turtle Wax white compound (in the squeeze bottle).  Get some Turtlewax car polish.

Use some 600 paper soaked in Formbys to level sand the finish.  Even GLOSS has that rash look, and must be level sanded and buffed.

Level sand the finish, changing paper often, and keeping things wet with the oil.  (thank you Frank Ford* for the great idea)

Once you have it level sanded, go over it with a clean rag and the white compound.  This will eliminate all the 600 grit marks, and bring it to a 95 percent finish.

At that point - you need to evaluate the finish.  Are there places to be fixed?  Are there places to be level sanded a bit more? 

If you need to "spot reshoot", no problem.  Wash the area REALLY well with Naphtha, dry sand it with CLEAN 600 paper, and wash it with Naphtha again.  Then shoot it.  Remember... this needs to dry a whole dry cycle (time-wise).  Re-level sand and re-compound.

Once you get it all compounded out nice, then go over it with the autowax, which will bring it to about 99 percent.  After that, you really need to get anal, get a buffer, anti-swirl etc etc.  Dunno if you wanna go there or not, but if you do those steps, then you'll end up with a look of a new guitar thats been played for a few months! (rather than factory/showroom new).  Works for me vs the time and expense (and anal nit-picking) of that "perfect high gloss".

Deft semi-gloss WILL sand/compound/buff out to full gloss, as is evident on my SG Special with the P90's, Les Paul Standard (faded) that I reshot the top on, and others.  It tends to sand better, and be just a bit "harder" finish than the full gloss too.

 

[Patrick from Davis]

Well, I had done everything you mentioned to the point of the white compound.  After playing with it today, another spot showed up while buffing.  It almost looks like there was a layer in there that didn't melt into the previous layers that well.  My shoulder is tired and it looks like I might have a lot of finishing to do on this.  This might just become ANOTHER summer project again.  Till then I might just put it together.  One more annoying thing is the white compound left lines in the finish, only three, but definitely lines.  They are pretty much scratches, and that was it for my patience.  I was happily buffing, well as much as you can be doing that part, and they showed up.  I checked the cloth and the compound and nothing seemed to have changed.  Oh well.
Patrick

 

[-CB-]

It almost looks like there was a layer in there that didn't melt into the previous layers that well.

This isn't too hard to fix, as your mostly "there".  You might have a melt in problem.  Its an fairly easy fix.

Wash the body with Naphtha.  Wash it again.  Wash it a third time.

Now DRY sand the area all around there the melt in problem is.

Wash the body again in Naphtha.

Shoot the area and around the area where you had the problem.  Feather it just a little if you can, but lay down a decent coat - not too dry, not too wet.

Let it set up a week or two.

Now relevel just that area and compound it.  Then polish.

This is your learning curve.  What happened is you got a little dry on a coat in there and it didn't melt in.  One way around that in the future is to sand the body between coats - very lightly - with like 600 paper.  Not leveling, just roughing it up ever so slightly.  That will help the melt in.

On the scratches - what you got there is contamination with the compound.  You picked up some sanding crud on your rag or it was left on the edge of a control or pickup route or something, and then... you got it on the rag and scratched things.  Just re sand really light, and re compound where the scratch is. 

All of this... is something that we learn, something that even comes back to experienced folks through lack of attention, or just dumb luck.  Don't sweat it, you've learned some stuff and will be a better finisher now.