Thread: waterbased lacquers and stains question

Originally Posted by old_picker

Hi,
They are using a product called Target USL in the states which apparently is great as a guitar finish and buffs out to a mirror shine. Wondering what the equivalent is here in OZ??

I am looking at wattyl WB Clear but it doesnt have the shine i was hoping for. I also tried the water based stain goop in the blue plastic bottles and didnt like that over much either. The wattyl WB clear seems to go good over feast and watson prooftint however which is a spirit based stain with a good colour range and looks good. I dunno whether this water based thing is pie in sky or not but i sure dont wanna use nitro.
thanks for any comments

Picker,

Have you tried the KTM brand finish marketed by Stewmac and LMI? I used 7 coats of same over a coat of shellac on the last steel string I made. Came up to a nice finish and is durable.

Picker, as I understand it, in general, if you use a water based stain you can use a spiritbased finish over it & the other way around.

The theory is that a water based finish would disolve a waterbased stain & a spirit based finish would disolve a spirit based stain.

I struck the problem on the weekend.
I had a nice piece of wood with some cracks in it.
I decided that it was going to be easier to make a feature of the cracks than it was to try to hide them so I flooded them with black stain & left it to dry.
Once dry I sanded it back & applied some EEE, whoops, black spit everywhere. :mad:
I looked at the fine print on the stain bottle & then saw that it was spirit based... I must admit that I had though that it did smell odd while I was applying it but I didn't read the bottle at the time.

I never thought they could ship that stuff from the us but looking again, yes they will although the stains etc they cant. I am assuming KTM = ColorTone Waterbase Lacquer. Wonder if feast and watson prooftint could be used to stain that lacquer as i dont like the idea of putting raw stain onto a expensive maple neck. As cliff points out and my limited experience shows staining wood then lacquering over the top has its problems not least of all is the strong take up of the end grain.

But seriously, importing a gallon of paint from the US ??? Sheesh!! Surely we have something that can be bought local that is an equivalent product.