plural noun: ascetics

a person who practices severe self-discipline and abstention.

:evilgrin:

aesthetics

I stand corrected.

Yeah, well I like his choices and the way they look too...;););)

We've had a few holdups, injury, a hurricane, B.I.G., a bad batch of lacquer, etc, etc, but Steve sent me these today. All finished and buffed out. Looking shiny!

https://i.imgur.com/DRPQhdK.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/s7PENOo.jpg

Beautiful finish, and that top shade is just perfect.
Those ascetic aesthetics reallllly paid off handsomely.
Good job guys,

Steve

I have to agree, I'm not big on bursts but this is super nice. Well done!

Beautiful guitar! So many interesting details and a stunning finish job. Dave

Great looking guitar!

Looking really good under finish. Hopefully no more setbacks on its way to you now.

Thanks for the kind comments, everyone. Yes, this guitar, named the "Eclipse Noir", has taken a long and winding path, but we're really close to finally getting it across the finish line. The main reason it has taken so long to get to this point is that, in the midst of tag-teaming four other complex guitar projects over the summer, I ran into supply chain problems with my old standby lacquer- Seagrave brand. I didn't have time to wait for back orders to ship, so I switched to Cardinal brand nitro lacquer. Many of my colleagues use this lacquer, and their guitars look fantastic; but my experience with it was very limited, to one guitar I built back in the early 2000's.

I made the mistake of assuming Cardinal lacquer would behave the same as the Seagrave brand. And I didn't have time to experiment or do a lot of research. I have successfully sprayed about 140 guitars with McFadden's nitocellulose lacquer, later re-branded Seagrave , so I thought I knew what I was doing... The clock was ticking like a snare drum... When it was time to start shooting lacquer on all five guitars, I just dove in the deep end and started spraying coats with my usual methods. When I got the first round of five coats sprayed, I level-sanded the guitars, and everything looked good, level-sanded to 400 grit. So I kept going. I completed three rounds of coats on each of the five guitars...

In the midst of all this, I sprayed the first top shade on James's Eclipse OM guitar. James and I both decided it didn't quite have the look we wanted, so I sanded the color coats off the base and sprayed on a second shaded coat. The second time, it looked much more like what we were aiming for; James liked it and so did I. So, jumping from one guitar to the next, I sprayed the top coats. Then proceeded with the wet sanding, 1000-grit and up. That's when the tiny, almost microscopic suspended bubbles in the lacquer began to reveal themselves, in one guitar after another. What a nightmare!

After tamping down my panic as I looked at the calendar, with only five weeks left before the B.I.G. show, I decided the only thing I could do was to sand everything back, all five guitars, and then spray each guitar with multiple coats of super-thinned lacquer and retarder, to melt the remaining finish to make it receptive to new top coats, and slow down the drying time so these clusters of tiny bubbles would flow out. That seemed to work, so I followed up with a new round of top coats.

I'm getting flashes to PTSD just thinking about it...

Tick-tick-tick-TICK-TICK... Days flying by at supersonic pace...

Of course, on James's guitar, with its "Noir" theme, all dark woods and a dark shade, those tiny bubbles (which turn out looking like super-fine white powder, like baking soda, sprinkled on the finish) showed up on various places on the guitar. I had to sand all the finish back to get the bubbles out, which meant I also had to sand off the new top shade; then spray thinner and retarder to re-melt the finish; then add a couple more base coats; and then spray a third version of the top shade...

I need to take a pause now. The next chapter of the saga is coming up later. I'll tell you what I learned from all this AFTER I glue the bridge on James's Eclipse Noir. That's happening now!

Wow, that is quite a story Steve, what a nightmare. Well it certainly looks like a million bucks now! You probably can't charge quite that much though, unfortunately for you with the amount of extra work involved. But, it was worth it as it looks great!

I don't know a single luthier who has ever been able to achieve perfection, or who hasn't had to deal with setbacks. It's part of the job. Finishing work is always a stressful tightrope walk across a deep canyon.

I just found a couple little spots that need a bit more gentle buffing. But that's part of the process. I buffed this guitar late in the day yesterday, and the lighting was less than ideal.

You never know what a finish going to look like until you buff it up to a mirror sheen. Any imperfections that were not visible before that stage will suddenly glare out at you. Yes, it can be fraught with anxiety and disappointment, but that's okay if the final result reveals that it was a labor of love.

Love is complicated, sometimes; at least, so I've heard. But it's always worth it if you try your best.

Or, as the Mandalorian Master says, "There is no 'try'. There is only do... or not do."

Steve it looks great as it has turned out. As I told you at B.I.G. I really found the eclipse that you had at the show to be a superlative playing and sounding guitar so I suspect this will sound as good as it looks!

To continue the story... Without boring you all further with the rest of the arduous and high-stress processes of getting those five guitars finished, TWICE, (short version: It was like walking through a minefield with a blindfold on), I'd like to share a few things I learned about Cardinal lacquer. Spoiler alert- boring technical stuff ahead!

One, once I got the bugs worked out (hopefully), I have to say I love the way this lacquer looks. It is crystal clear, neutral cast with no strong amber tint, and pretty easy to use if you do it correctly. And while it gases off really hard and can really stink up the joint right after you spray, the fumes and smell dissipate very quickly. You need a very good respirator when you use it, and you need very efficient ventilation to clear the room after each session. But Cardinal doesn't smell super gassy nearly as long as Seagrave does.

The product literature makes a couple of fallacious claims, according to some people I've talked with about it who know from experience. One, Cardinal says it is pre-diluted at 10%, and can be used right out of the can that way. NOPE! It has to be thinned to anywhere from 20% to 50% thinner. It is also good to add some butyl cellosolve retarder to slow the drying time.

The reason the tiny bubbles happened is that straight Cardinal lacquer dries in about 1/3rd the time that Seagrave does. It skins over so fast, the suspended gases don't have time to escape. So it must be thinned quite a bit, and retarder added, so the bubbles won't form under the surface before it skins over.

Because you need to thin Cardinal lacquer quite a bit, you also have to shoot incrementally more coats to get the same build. The good news on that is, if you're in a hurry, you only need to wait about 45 minutes between spraying each coat. Whereas, Seagrave recommends two hours between coats.

Another claim that Cardinal makes is that their lacquer cures completely in one week. Umm, no it doesn't, unless you don't care so much about having a flat, mirror-surface finish. Yeah, it may be possible to buff it after only one week, but it will continue to shrink and harden for awhile longer; resulting in a dimpled, uneven look, especially on very porous woods. I think it's safe to do the wet sanding and buffing after two weeks, and three weeks is even better. I buffed up my three show guitars two weeks after re-shooting the top coats, and they turned out okay; but I wish I'd had another week to cure them.
Cardinal still comes in way ahead of Seagrave, because Seagrave lacquer needs four or five weeks to reach a stable cure. Cardinal is ready in half that time.

So, despite being caught with my pants on backwards (so to speak) with the Cardinal lacquer, and despite all the mental anguish and physical exhaustion from this marathon experience, I am sticking with Cardinal lacquer. I'm actually looking forward to finishing my next guitars with it, now that I have a glimmer of a clue how to use the stuff. I do hope that Cardinal Coatings will amend their product literature to more accurately reflect reality (pun intended), but if this explication of my experience helps anyone avoid the pitfalls I took, it's well worth the trouble of learning from someone else's experience!

Many thanks to Ben Wilborn for generously sharing his knowledge on this subject. He's been using Cardinal lacquer for a long time, and if you see his guitars up close and in person, they look every bit as superb as they sound. That's why I'm sticking with Cardinal- because I want to be more like Ben!

Thank you Ron. You're very kind! I have grown pretty attached to that guitar too. You wouldn't believe how much the tone has blossomed since I got back home from the show. I'll be offering it for sale soon, and I'm really going to miss that one!

I bet you're having an absolute blast with your new John Kinnaird guitar! Those Kinnaird boys, they got it goin' on for real, huh?