Re-fret all done. Levelled, polished, dressed with hemispherical ends (though I might give it another once over).
All I need to do now is clean up the fretboard and edges, final cut and polish, solder the new pickups and string it up!!
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Really nice work there, Darryl!
You can't see it in the pics, but the lacquer on the headstock keeps developing cracks!! How do I fix this and what's causing it?
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Hmmm...How long did you leave the finish to harden before stringing her up?
That's the thing man - it was doing it without even having anything on it. It must have something to do with the way it contracts when it hardens. It's been sitting for two weeks without being touched. I've decided to wait until the weather heats up more before retouching the finish. I don't think the cooler weather is helping my case
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On a positive note - the IronGear pickups sound cool. They have enough power, but what's surprising is how well it cleans up when you ease up on your attack. Don't even need to adjust the volume really ... I like them a lot
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The cracking can be due to two things. Either sudden temperature changes, where the wood and the finish contract or expand at different rates, or else an incompatibility between the materials used in the finish. I know you used DT on the body, but what exactly have you used on the headstock? You mentioned lacquer, but what type, and what was used to blacken the headstock underneath it?
Sorry Simon - I thought I'd already replied to this!! Anyway - just black spray paint is what I used. Then I went with a clear lacquer over the top of that. I'm tempted to sand it all back to the wood and start again, this time using black stain. The finish now looks like when mud dries in the desert. It looks kind of cool, but not what I was going for, so I need to ponder my options ...Originally Posted by Simon Barden
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Ahh...I had a similar problem doing my latest headstock when doing the second coat of paint. All I could do was to strip/sand it all back and start again. I went with a stain second time, had some small bleeding problems with some ink I also used, but the stain and lacquer were fine together.
I don't know what caused the initial reaction. It was the same paint, all clean, it all seemed good but crackled almost immediately.
Did you clean it with a tack cloth or metho, etc before applying the clear coat?
This is typical of a paint mis-match. This is called crazing - and is an effect you can do on purpose in pottery. The different paints are curing at different rates so the top layer in this case is contracting faster than the bottom layer. So while the lacquer has bonded well, its outgassed (outgassing is where the solvent evaporates out of the pigment and bonding agents) and hardened quicker than the black paint. Some paints take many weeks and months to properly cure, so even when they feel hard and you can polish them, they can still be going through the curing process. This is why its really important to use compatible paints that dry at the same rate. Its also important that the undercoats can 'breath' through the top coats, so they all need the same solvent base usually.
EDIT: I just read IRLguitars post where you say you used the same paint. That is strange, but different temperatures during spraying could account for it. If the original layer was already mostly cured, then you sprayed the second one on at a lower temp, it bonded, but then contracted quicker than the first coat given the same crazing result.
Last edited by Sonic Mountain; 05-09-2017 at 04:36 PM.
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