Repair And Restoration
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Finish repair from mystery solvents
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Finish repair from mystery solvents
A customer brought this Gibson songwriter deluxe in, it’s approximately 20 years old to his recollection. It needs a few things done including fret work and a bridge re glue.
At some point the guitar was lent out to a friend who dropped it then tried to fix the finish themselves. It looks like they used some kind of cleaner or something that didn’t get along with the lacquer at all. I’ll attach pictures but it’s kinda hard to get a picture of. I tried polishing it out with Novus with no luck.
My question is, is there an easy way to fix the swirls in the finish? I told him we would probably looking at sanding down to that layer of the lacquer and re spraying to get rid of it and he wasn’t super receptive. Just wanted to throw it out and see if there’s another way to fix it before I tell him that’s our only option.
Thanks!
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5 Replies
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Ian is probably going to be your guy on this, maybe Doug too. Years ago Behlen made a product that would slowly dissolve into many finishes and even things out. Don’t know if that is still available and if it works on nitro though.
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Sand and buff a small area and see the results.
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I agree with this. Just Novus probably wasn’t going to be enough. It kind of looks like someone accidentally used alcohol instead of naptha. It’s a very subtle boo boo.
Use some 2000 grit sanding paper and a flat block and in a small area, test sanding it and then polishing it up with the Novus. Things to watch for are your paper excessively gumming up. If there is a broader chemistry issue with the lacquer, stop. You could wind up sanding down to bare wood before you find lacquer that can be polished.
As your customer indicated that they aren’t interested in spray, think about this really hard though. Sanding and polishing always comes with the risk that the finish isn’t thick enough to support this. Sanding through will result in spraying.
Those old Gibsons are often heavy on the lacquer. You might do just fine.
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I was able to take some very fine grit sand paper and sand probably 95% of it out, I didnt want to press my luck trying to chase tiny spots out. I took the opportunity to order some of the eagle abrasive bufflex sandpaper to try out. It was a little spendy but definitely worth the money for this application.
Thanks for the help everyone!
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Awesome, I’ll run this by him and see how he wants to proceed. Thanks everyone for the help!
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