Quote:
Originally Posted by mhw48
Getting very close, indeed! Now is the most tedious part of the process: literally watching "paint" dry...
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Famous last words! Often these build threads give an impression of a smooth and trouble-free process, a series of steps that are executed with precision and expertise, an exquisite ballet of lutherie! and largely I imagine that is the case. But sometimes, the way is a bit more complicated than at other times.
Well, a complication developed as Nick was varnishing the guitar. His varnish was working very well, drying beautifully, with a stunning amber tint -- but he couldn’t get his finishing room clean enough. He has it set up in the basement of his house, and he discovered that any walking upstairs above the guitar would produce a few fine dust particles that would settle into the wet finish. Unlike nitrocellulose, it wasn’t possible to sand smooth just the affected areas, because the color of the varnish would then become mottled. It meant sanding down the entire coat, and applying a new coat. Then imperfections would again mar the varnish, and that coat would get sanded off.
Nick realized that he needed a completely different cleanroom to work in, set up specifically for varnish work. He has space in another part of his home that, with some work, he could set up. However, Nick and Jeanne are busy packing up their house in preparation for a move so that isn’t really an option.
Nick was really apologetic, he felt that he’d jumped the gun on agreeing to the varnish finish. I felt bad too: Nick had initially just talked about his tests with varnish, and I had suggested going for it with my guitar. He’d been a bit reluctant, and had warned me it might not work. At the time we agreed: if the varnish doesn’t work then just go with lacquer instead.
Now Nick offered me that option — he could abandon the varnish and instead spray the guitar with nitrocellulose. I’d have the guitar within the month. Or, if I was really set on the varnish he could seal and prepare the guitar for varnish and then wait for a couple of months until after the move and he has his varnish clean room set up.
Not so easy to decide — when I’d first discussed the build with Nick, we had both assumed it would have a nitro finish. If I opted for that I’d be getting the guitar that I had originally imagined, and I’d have it soon. On the other hand, once Nick had mentioned his research and experimentation with oil varnish finishes, I got pretty excited about the varnish. After seeing the picture of it, I was hooked.
It turned out that Nick was hooked too. He talked about the color, and about how somehow it felt different to touch the finished varnish surface. He would really like to eventually stop spraying lacquer all together.
“If you don’t want to wait, that makes perfect sense. I can spray it and you'll have it real soon. But, if if you don’t mind waiting, well some guitar has to be the first one I varnish…”
So, despite the fact that it meant a much longer wait for the guitar, I opted to stick with varnish.
That decision settled, I asked: “So I assume that means you have to strip off the varnish that’s on there now?”
“Yeah. Well, no… I actually ripped the whole top off…” Nick replied.
What happens when you commission a build from a perfectionist? Lots of things, of course, but the main one is that the guitar you ultimately receive is as close to the luthier’s ideal as they can bring it. So what happens when the luthier decides the guitar he is building is not going to meet his ideal? To explain fully I need to back up slightly:
As Nick was packing up his home, preparing to move, he stumbled across a long forgotten trove of Swiss spruce tops. As soon as he found them he immediately thought that one of those tops would have been a better match for the African Blackwood back and sides on my guitar. The top that was on there was “really nice,” in Nick’s words, the best option out of what he had thought he had available. But it kept bothering him that the characteristics of the Swiss Spruce were better suited, and… last week out came the router and the top was off.
Nick worked like a fiend preparing the new top — removing the rosette from the old top and inlaying it into the new one, gluing and shaping the braces and then gluing the new top onto the back and sides.
“I didn’t want to mention it until it was all done…” Nick told me, “I documented the whole transition. Do you want me to send the photos?”
Nick texted me the photos. Along with a short video of a whirring router and a detached guitar top.
“Kinda creepy.” He noted.
The rosette removed from the old top, and installed on the Swiss Spruce top: