Tru-oil finish. When to wax it?

[Kain VKail]

so ive got this soloist body (dont worry ill post pics of it hahah) its mahogany with a koa top. ive put a tru-oil finish on it and it looks awesomazing. but i need to wax it. ive already done the final coating and ive done everything i want to it , but i just cant find any info on this particular subject. im gonna say wait like 2 days or so after the last coat but id just like to be safe and ask.

also wat kind of wax should i use. i have a tru-oil wax but i dont know if theres something better than that. can someone help me out here.

 

[Cagey]

I'm no Tru-oil expert, so take it with a grain of salt, but I'm not sure you're supposed to wax that stuff. Chances are fairly good you're going to have to reapply it at some point in the future, and wax would make that tough to do.

 

[Kain VKail]

i think your supposed to wax any oil finish. it protects the oil from rubbing away since its such a thin type of finish. id just like to know how long until im supposed to wait after the last coat so i can wax it and then start finishing the build because i want to play it sooooo bad.

 

[Cagey]

I just spent the last half hour reading threads on over a dozen sites, and the general consensus seems to be that you don't wax it. The reasons I saw most often is that it wouldn't improve the appearance if the finish was properly applied and buffed in the first place, it doesn't add any protection, and it makes it difficult to renew the finish later on, which is something you need to do from time to time with oil (tung, danish, tru-oil, etc.) finishes. The few sites where I saw people actually doing it anyway were guitar sites, and the only recommendation I saw for a waiting period was 1 to 2 weeks.

I know you're looking for protection rather than appearance, so you're probably barking up the wrong tree with wax. Wax isn't going to be as hard as the oil you're trying to protect, which isn't saying much. I think you can put shellac over Tru-oil, though. That's fairly hard. Harder than wax, anyway.

If it was just an appearance issue, most of the sites recommended rubbing compound rather than wax.

I know that probably doesn't help much, but I just thought I'd pass along what I found.

 

[Kain VKail]

ok that makes a good bit of sense now. sorry about the previous post being a bit stand-offish im just miffed about there being limited info about this kind of thing. would you mind posting those websites for me? or just some info on what you found.

 

[Cagey]

I think the reason the info is limited is because it's not generally done. Plus, a lot of waxes have silicone in them, which is a no-no for many things.

I'd give you links, but I didn't write them down. All I did was Google "Wax over Tru-Oil Finishes" (or words to that effect) and got more hits than I could read in a lifetime. So, I read through the most likely suspects on the first page of 100 hits, and that's where I learned what I did. I'm sure you'd get the same results.

Apparently, oil finishes are quite popular on gun stocks and pistol grips. I was surprised at how many more sites there were about those than musical instruments. Same rules apply, though.

 

[Kain VKail]

yah thats obviouse. wood is wood no matter what its used for hahahaha. but yah it was just hard to find exactly what i was looking for. i think basically what i need to do is just take all the best aspects of what i find and then put that together in some fashion that makes a great deal of sense. ill look into the shellac area. because i would like to keep this guitar looking pretty along with just protecting it for musicality purposes. but thanks for your help!!!

 

[partialdoctor]

I used Zaino over mine and it looks great!