Mcfadden story...

Friend of mine placed an order for £1000/$1600 of lacquer the day before Mcfadden's declared bankrupcy. This was a verbal order, over the phone to someone he had been doing business with for years. No telling some people is there?

I've called Mcfadden twice in the past two months. The only one I was ever able to talk to was the security guard. Wish your friend well and tell him to get in line. I think it's pretty long.

Seagrave Coatings is taking over McFadden's formulas.

I trust your pal did not pay for the order...if he or she did, they're SOL as we say here.

If he paid for it, than that is crap. I worked for a high end retail co. and we went bankrupt. They wanted me to continue selling even though there was no guarantee of delivery of product. I wouldn't sell anything I knew I couldn't deliver. It hurt my paycheck, but I kept my integrity intact. If he paid with a credit card, he can dispute it, hopefully.

I am VERY glad that we didn't make the switch to UV. We were strongly considering the UV cured by McFadden, but decided it wasn't the right time. My father and I talked about it on more than one occasion and the last time was a few months before the bankruptcy. I have to say that we were very close to biting the bullet. My brother was ready to finance a booth and I did a lot of research to work it into the production schedule. Whew!

Not to say that we won't switch in the future, but I'm going to wait a bit and see how the new owner does.

Are those UV products single source or do other mfgrs offer similiar finishes ?
Is the UV bulb firm that McFadden referred customers to for the special wavelength bulbs still in biz ?
Last time i checked it sounded like they were a single source of these critical components, but i might be mistaken.

Hey William,

Nice to see you on the boards. I hardly check up on the FMBB, so I haven't "seen" you in a while.

There's a couple of other manufacturers that make UV cured finishes. The brand that we use has a line of products, but they don't carry them locally. The salesman would have to go to a special training class somewhere on the mainland, so he said they don't plan on carrying them any time soon. There were also a couple of other brands, but I can't remember what they were. I don't know about the bulb makers. I do know that the wavelength is specific, but no one would tell me what it is. I'm sure they keep it secret on purpose, to discourage people from buying elsewhere. As for the wavelength between brands, I would assume they're close.

koalohapaul said:

Hey William,

Nice to see you on the boards. I hardly check up on the FMBB, so I haven't "seen" you in a while.

There's a couple of other manufacturers that make UV cured finishes. The brand that we use has a line of products, but they don't carry them locally. The salesman would have to go to a special training class somewhere on the mainland, so he said they don't plan on carrying them any time soon. There were also a couple of other brands, but I can't remember what they were. I don't know about the bulb makers. I do know that the wavelength is specific, but no one would tell me what it is. I'm sure they keep it secret on purpose, to discourage people from buying elsewhere. As for the wavelength between brands, I would assume they're close.

Click to expand...

With modern solid state UV light units you have controll over the wavelength of light..I had use of one for adhesives when I was manufacturing Loudspeakers...Here's one just like my Dentist uses on my fillings.
http://www.agiltron.com/solid state uv light.htm?gclid=CKDin7SuvJ8CFQeElAodSTCFzg

hi Paul, just curious - what kind of investment were you looking at to introduce UV finishes into your shop ?

I was poking around the net and found this interesting ad-itorial:

http://www.radtech.org/Industry/documents/UVFinishesforWood.pdf

Looks like there are a lot of manufacturers in the UV coating biz these days offering some cute new technologies: electrostatic 100% solids UV clear coating systems with 95% efficiency.
I'm guessing some of the factories adoping this kind of stuff are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on plant. Thats a lot of ukuleles ;-)

It was Bob Taylor, the king of UV guitar finishes, who told me not to bother unless I was making at least 200 guitars a month...which I'm not. The cure time on MEKP catalyzed polyester is plenty fast for us small time builders. I can shoot topcoats and rub out the next day if need be. I've done a complete finish, start to end, in four days, and it looks great after four years now...no grain sinking into the pores, nice and thin with a hint of spruce grain showing on the top, and just beautiful and tough, tough, tough.

I'm using Simtec polyester now, and I'm looking into other polyurethanes...ChemCraft, etc.

It's also worth looking at modern automotive finishes again. When they went to acrylic lacquers, they lost us luthiers, but now some of the catalyzed polyurethanes are looking very good and are flexible enough to do well on wood.

But... but... I'm all about acrylics (airbrush art) ... Is it the shrinking thing or lack of that makes acrylics bad for lutherie?