Interest in Painting and or Staining

Hi all
I have had an interest in the painting and staining of timber projects of many kinds for a number of years now, mainly architectural, industrial and domestic type projects and am intrigued with many of the forum articles I've read which specifically relating to guitar decorating.

I always thought 'dye stains' and ' nitro lacquers' would be the most favourable to musical instruments as the preference.?

I'm reading about acrylic stains / black stump paint / various types of oils etc and am curious as what products are considered to be the best for guitars.

I have some paint industry experience (30 years) working for a now global paint manufacturer and am not wishing to exert myself as a salesman or know it all.

I appreciate the paint /stain applications to guitars is both unique and specialised and am only interested for my own benefit.

So interested in general thoughts on Pigment stain / dye stain / Alkyd / Laquer / 2 pack ? / Nitro ?

regards Guvna

I've used auto acrylics a lot. I've used wood dyes, stains and fountain pen inks. Used Tru Oil a couple of times. Tru oil is slightly yellowish which is fine over natural timber or darker colours but does show up on binding (Whatever they use at the Gretsch factory does too) where auto acrylic doesn't. So far I haven't had any shrinking or cracking but my house is temperature stable all year round and they never leave here. I have katana sayas here (sheaths) I painted with auto paint 10yrs ago and still look great, the saya is generally magnolia wood. Don't know of where I could buy nitro around here and I don't have good enough breathing gear to be spraying 2 pack. As I said elsewhere I have no option but to spray outdoors , usually early in the morning before the breeze comes up.
I'm sure some others will disagree with my processes but everyone has their own methods and standards I only build for my own amusement..

The benefit of nitro is that it ages nicely and is easier than just about anything else to touch-up afterwards. Polyurethane is harder wearing and if you can keep the finish thin, as with the nitro, then it does let the wood resonate a bit more. Any finish too thickly applied can kill a lot of the wood's natural resonance. Auto acrylics are mid-way between the two for wear, but seem to need the right conditions to dry well. Over enthusiastic spraying can leave the surface hard but the underneath still wet - and this takes a while to dry out. The more coats you add on top of this, the worse it gets.

As Dedman says, 2-pack stuff needs a pro spray booth and ventilation set-up. Probably great for solid colours but it will only ever get used by people with access to the right kit. As a result I haven't heard about thickness levels or how flat a surface you get. It's one thing spraying onto flat meta and another on to an absorbent, fairly uneven, piece of wood.

Water based wood dyes are good, a lot of pro guitars are first stained then sprayed with nitro. The problem on kit guitars with thin veneers is that if you aren't careful and frugal with the dye, the water can affect the glue and the veneer can lift in places. So very good on solid woods, less so on veneers. You can get the concentrated dye itself (StewMac sell it), and it will mix with most solvents, so blending with turps or metho (or better, a mixture of the two for a similar drying time to water) lets you work it in and blend different dyes together on veneer without anything like the risk of using water.

I've no experience of the DT finishes. They can work well (from reading the build diaries), but seem to need just the right drying conditions for a hassle-free result. But it is a finish you can apply at home safely.

I've gone with sprayed nitro to date (now got a couple of guns and an air compressor), but in the UK I can only do that for about 6 months of the year as it can't be too cold or humid. The temperature in Australia is generally a lot warmer, but many places suffer from periods of very high humidity, which seems to mess up almost any type of finish. You can use rattle cans and achieve a good result, but obviously the spray pattern is fixed, and I found that the lacquer varied in viscosity, from runny to thick and clumpy, so prefer to use a mini spray-gun (a standard gun is overkill for a guitar and requires a larger compressor) where I can adjust the lacquer myself with thinners.