Chips in finish

[Michael S. Fields]

The Hummingbird I'm working on also has chips in the finish on the back of the headstock at a tuning machine hole. It's too big for the tuning machine to cover up, so what would be the best way to fix it? Thanks.

Mike Fields

[Andrew]

Is that an opaque black lacquer, or something else thats appearing dark/opaque in this picture?

[Matt Dreher]

these are some of the things i have done in my repair shop that you may want to try.

- If you want to just color it, I have used simply a black sharpie. This is obviously not "fixed", but is easy.

- The next level would be the black sharpie and then a thin layer of super glue and level sand and buff. The little edge chips will burn in a little but still be visible. The color will "almost" match. 

- the last would be to mix a bit of lacquer with black pigment and have it ready. take some lacquer thinner and lightly moisten all the edges that are chipped. this will soften the edges and make the chips almost invisible if all goes well. Before the thinner dries "drop fill" the black lacquer into the area, level sand and buff. you will have to do a few drop fills as the lacquer shrinks a bit when it dries and wont fill properly without a few layers applied. this will give the most professional results. 

There are other ways of doing it but i use all three of these methods frequently. 

[Michael S. Fields]

I'm sorry, I should have added more detail. It's a transparent brown, maybe what Stew Mac calls Tobacco Brown.

[Andrew]

I wondered.

Assuming the wood wasnt stained first (could be the case since it seems), mix up some tinted lacquer to match, wet the chipout with lacquer thinner for a minute, then apply drop fills till youre above the existing finish. You can see in the chips that almost all of the lacquer thickness is tinted. You could clear coat the top but I dont know that its worth the effort in that siuation, unless you want the practise. Let it shrink back as long as you can then level and buff it. Assuming the finish is nitro.

If its not nitro, Id probably tint some epoxy and use that to fill. Youll need to avoid bubbles in the epoxy. It wont buff out the same as whats there, but its small and in a discrete area. I would rather use superglue to drop fill catalyzed finishes, but I havent found a way to tint it withoutsetting it off and making a smelly mess. Burn in sticks could work too.

Im far from great at touching up finishes, especially polys etc, so maybe wait for more pointers.