Be careful with the rounds, they wear much more than flats or tape-wounds. The other 5 string that I am working on has an unfinished rosewood fingerboard and the round-wounds it came with have already left marks. I haven't even played it much since assembling it and it was brand new.
I stained and lacquered both necks over the past week. I went with Simon’s recommendation and mixed up an amber dye out of my premixed Transfast primary colors: 30mL yellow and then adding red drop by drop until it was slightly orange and then doing the same with blue until I had a rich amber. I was really pleased with the result. I did the 5 string neck with the a darker amber mix, then sanded back and recoated with the lighter amber. I added 6 coats of Minwax spray lacquer (my local Woodcraft store looked it up and said it is 3% nitrocellulose) and it turned the ugly spots on the neck into beauty marks! It is quite iridescent. I stained the maple fingerboard on my 4 string with the darker amber but I am not ready to unmask it yet, you’ll have to wait for that reveal! Would it be better to do the CA glue/epoxy fingerboard coat straight to raw wood or can I hit it with lacquer first?
Last edited by Toolman76; 04-05-2021 at 08:43 PM. Reason: Typo
Straight to raw wood would be my choice so the epoxy really grips the wood. I know the lacquer will grip the wood, but I'm less sure of how well the epoxy will grip the lacquer. Epoxy straight on to dyed wood will be fine (provided the wood's fully dried off afterwards). So unless you really must add a lacquer coat to the fingerboard for extra colour, it would probably be best to avoid it if you can. I'm no expert on this, but as the lacquer won't be providing any of the actual board protection, as that will be done by the epoxy, if it were me, I'd leave it off.
The Minwax looks to be a simple clear nitro lacquer spray. From the safety sheet, all the contents apart from the nitrocellulose are solvents or propellants: https://www.minwax.com/document/SDS/en/US/027426152007
If you do spray the lacquer, then I'd wait a good month for it to cure hard and for all the solvents to evaporate before applying the epoxy. Otherwise you could get solvents trapped beneath the epoxy, and that may well loosen its hold on the lacquer.
I was thinking it might be better on raw wood. The nitro is softer than the CA and I know you want the substrate to be less flexible than the top coat. I'm just trying to get as much shimmer and chatoyance from the wood and wasn't sure whether CA would enhance the grain as well as nitro. I love what it did for both necks! Wish I had done my 4 string body with it instead of poly.
Whoops! I got a little careless removing the tape. Oh well, took a little extra time this morning to remove the "blemishes" and level the fingerboard but it's fixed now. I had to mix up more dye so the color is darker, but I think it will look better than what I had. Lesson learned!
Glad I ordered a 12" radius sanding block with my fretless neck, or that could've been a difficult mess!
That color is very cool. This is fun build to watch.
You may be asking a lot. My old string bass had steel, flatwound strings and an ebony board, and it held up pretty well. That said, ebony is about twice as hard as maple and about a third harder than rosewood. I'd want the finish to be as hard as possible, to avoid having to refinish too often. Of course, it would come as no surprise to my wife that laziness tends to trump aesthetics on my projects...Originally Posted by Toolman76
Thanks Fender3x, it is definitely a fun build! I have been reading about epoxy and West Systems 105/207 would be my choice, but knowing that all epoxies yellow/darken over time makes me hesitant. It’s also north of $100 USD. I have CA and activator. Though CA has a lower shear strength than epoxy, I agree sometimes laziness/thrift/practicality is the smarter option. Hmm, I’ll CA coat the other bass fingerboard in the meantime. It is rosewood, so I am not as timid and can get a feel for the process.
When I was building my canoe, I used the Aussie epoxy Bote Cote. Specifically I used the one with a non yellowing hardener.
Ouch! you can buy a lot of sandpaper and CA for $100 USD! Hope that Rabbit's idea is cheaper.
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