Official Luthiers Forum!

The finish has failed around where the belt buckle would normally be on this Les Paul. A piece has flaked off and it looks like the discolored section around the chip is also finish separated from the wood.

I've repaired bubbled finish on the edge of a lacquered instrument before using butyl cellosolve to soften and reattach the loose finish and then drop filling the missing section with nitro, but it was a much smaller area and less noticeable. The customer doesn't expect invisible, he just doesn't want it to get worse. If this was a poly finish I'd simply flow some thin CA underneath, but I'm hesitant with this one especially because it seems like a large area I doubt the CA would get to the edges of the failed section.

Any thoughts?

Wow, never seen the finish flake off like that with lacquer. I'd still try the thinnest CA I could find...

_________________
"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Yeah weird. The other guitar I'd seen before like this was sitting in one of those guitar stands with the orange rubber tubing. It totally burned trough the finish where the guitar had sat, and started to flake like that around the burn. But this is weird. Maybe it's not actually lacquer? but its a 2014 american les paul, looks and feels like lacquer to me.

You could test by touching a spot under a cover with acetone or lacquer thinner... Under the truss rod cover or inside the control cavity.

_________________
"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Sure doesn't look like lacquer. I'd say poly or urethane.

Yup Nitro. I wiped a little acetone inside the jack cavity and the finish got gummy.

Just cause acetone softened it does not necessarily mean nitro.... Could be acrylic lacquer or an early CAB variant. I agree it doesn't look like nitro.

_________________
Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

Warning: I've never done this. Seeing as how the damaged finish responds to lacquer thinner and it appears to be separated from the wood quite extensively, perhaps building up a dam of several layers of masking tape around the injury and dousing the area with lacquer thinner might get the existing finish to reattach? And there would be less finish needed to apply to make a repair that looked like somebody wanted to tone down the damage, at least offer a surface to try to level to.

_________________
Peter Havriluk

Good to know. Thanks Brian. For future reference, any idea what Gibson was using in 2014? Is there a way to tell the difference between acryclic and nitro lacquers, and does it matter from a repair perspective? And what is a CAB variant?

I ended up using very thin CA, which wicked under a lot of the light area, confirming the fact that the finish was lifting there. Then I filled the void with thicker CA and levelled the spot so there was no chance of the finish continuing to flake. The customer wasn't interested in anything more involved. The other light areas where the CA didn't wick are probably just one belt buckle crunch away from flaking too, but the customer is aware and happy.

Good job, Conor. Post pix when it's done...

_________________
"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

It's already gone...