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Work Day # 30-31 - February 20 and 21, 2009 ( 5 hrs)
With the second coat of shellac dry, we sanded first with 220 then 320. Then we cleaned it off really well with the air gun, paper towel and tack cloth and we put on the first coat of lacquer. We use a 1/2" brush on the head and neck and a 2" on the body of the guitar.
To make things easier, first lacquer the head, then the top, then the back and sides and finish with the neck. This lets you hang on to the neck while you lacquer nearly the entire guitar. Then to do the neck, you can hold the guitar from the sound hole.
Take care to cover all of the guitar (except the top of the finger board, but we do lacquer the sides of the finger board) and watch for bristles from the brush that may come off...you'll want to get those out as quickly as you can.
Lacquer dries quickly, so you should cover a section and move on...you can't really go back over it. The lacquer will bunch up on itself while it's tacky if you brush it again.
On work day #30, we had time to apply 2 coats. You only need to let it dry 30-40 mins between coats.
Dad did some extra sanding on one section of the back (on the seam) that just wasn't as smooth as it should be. He sanded it down through the shellac to the wood, put a line of CA glue (super-glue) in the gap, filed it, then sanded it smooth. Then he built up the the coats of shellac and lacquer.
If you let the lacquer dry for more than 6 hours, you'll want to lightly sand it w/ 320 before applying the next coats. On work day #31 we scuffed the guitar with 320 and put on another 3 coats for a total of 5.
One of the characteristics of lacquer is that it cuts back into itself when you apply each new coat...so it's not necessary to sand it smooth between coats. We will work our way up to 8 coats total over the entire guitar.
With the time we had between coats today, I copied the guitar body template dad has of Hannabach's design. This is the design dad saw when he was there in 1972 and built with Hannabach and it's the same design they used in 1997 when Hannabach came to dads house and built a guitar with him.
