little timber
Well-known member
looks like you nailed the finish, do you mind my asking about the finishing process you used on this one?
#6 Western red cedar, curly claro walnut, with padauk binding and fretboard
- Thread starter Matt Clara
- Start date
OP
OP
On the sound board I used cyanoacrylate (super glue, aka, CA glue), although it wasn't originally my intention to do so, but there was a slight gap on the rosette I needed to fill, and the thin super glue I was using got away from me a bit and on to the surface of the western red cedar, which it penetrated pretty quickly, so rather than try to sand it away, I applied it to the whole thing and then sanded smooth. The result is a nice smooth hard surface. Western red cedar doesn't have much in the way of pores to begin with, so it doesn't need pore filling, but the CA glue really got it dead level in a hurry. On top of that (and over the whole uke) is a coat of Zinsser dewaxed shellac, which was there to keep the glue from the binding sticking to or penetrating the wood. That got pretty much sanded away, but I gave it another wash coat before I finished with Behlen stringed instrument lacquer using an inexpensive Earlex sprayer. Because the Earlex doesn't atomize the lacquer very well, to get a thin wet coat that doesn't lead to too much orange peel texture, I had to thin the lacquer quite a bit (about 40%) and ended up putting eight coats of that on the instrument at about four coats a day. I gave it a little over two weeks to cure and then wet sanded it with a small block and 400, 600, 1000, 1200, and 1500 grit sand paper, carefully wiping it down with a bit of clean rag between each sanding, and then finished it off with the medium and fine colortone polishing compounds purchased from StewMac, along with the foam buffers there, which you put in your drill press. Then it's pretty shiny.
little timber
Well-known member
Thank you for that, I do have to try the ca glue pore filling. Did you stain the walnut black and then sand back to make the curl pop or was it just that nice looking without any special effects?
OP
OP
It's pretty dramatic figure without any stain added, although the work I did on the photo in computer may have enhanced it a bit.
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