The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
  1. #1

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    On strats/teles it’s common to apply steel wool to matte down a glossy finish. Some people strip away the finish almost down to the wood. And there are custom jobs with gunstock oil and the like.

    But you almost never hear about this for gibson style guitars with mahogany necks. Some googling suggests that mahogany doesn’t take well to this kind of treatment.

    Is this true, if so, why?

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  3. #2

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    Quote Originally Posted by frankhond
    Some googling suggests that mahogany doesn’t take well to this kind of treatment.

    Is this true, if so, why?
    If you only scuff up the surface of the finish, how could it matter what type of wood it's made from?

    FWIW I have a mahogany neck J&D archtop that has a matte finish all over. I play it a lot, and guess what, the matte neck is now nicely polished from my hands.

  4. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by j4zz
    If you only scuff up the surface of the finish, how could it matter what type of wood it's made from?
    I found some random forum posts (not here) where it was suggested that mahogany is more porous, so scuffing down the finish would result in an uncomfortable sandpapery feel. I'm asking here to hopefully get this debunked or confirmed :-)

    I have a mahogany neck guitar where the nitro finish is very worn in some places by previous owner. Was considering scuffing down the finish for a consistently matte feel. But need to know if this is a bad idea, and best way to go about it.

  5. #4

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    As a raw unfinished wood, mahogany and maple are very different woods in many ways. In neck feel, yes mahogany is an open wood and maple is a closed pore wood. This translates to a rougher feel (some describe it as a 'drier' feel) rather than the maple which you can get quite a beautiful and smooth (fast) feel from even from polish sanding the wood itself.
    Before mahogany is even finished, it's often considered a given that the wood has some kind of pore filler or base coats applied, drunken up and sanded back so it can acquire the smooth evenness that maple has to begin with. This means bare wood will not feel slick and certainly won't remain so with exposure to the elements.
    J4zz is right that once you apply a coat, you're feeling the finish. But because mahogany drinks up finish, the underlying 'roughness' of the wood will indeed reflect the nature of the wood until it's completely built up. Picture two landscapes at the onset of an ice age: One is a smooth expanse of gently rolling hills and plains, the other a rocky craggy mountain region full of valleys and peaks.
    Once it starts to accumulate, the gentle topography soon evens out to a smooth even flat snowy expanse. The rough lands do get covered with layers of ice, but it's not until the entire built up landscape is covered and worn flat (the entire continent of greenland, for instance) that you get the smoothness of a 'non-porous' land surface.
    If you want a satiny feel, I would not recommend going to the bare wood (even violin necks, which are by design left unvarnished, are oiled to protect the wood. The oils of the hand continue this process on the maple neck).
    You can take the finish and sand it with a finishing grade sandpaper (2000+) and that will disrupt the flat feel of the slick finished surface.
    Personally, I can feel the difference between poly and nitro. I like to remove the finish of a poly neck, fit the neck to my hand (I play thumb on the neck, classic style) and refinish with nitro. But that's just me. I'm not recommending or suggesting it for anyone else. I just like a guitar to be like a well worn glove under my hand. I don't bring it back to a mirror shine, but over time, my hands do that on their own. I feel the neck get 'faster' in that process.
    It's your hands, you'll learn what feels good to you. Know the wood, respect the protection a finish is designed to offer, take the guitar to the point where it plays invisibly to you and make music.
    Good luck.

  6. #5

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    I have a ~1953 Epiphone with a mahogany neck, which was once (badly) refinished before it came to me. The neck had not been filled, and was rather rough feeling because of the mahogany open pores. I redid the neck with Tru-Oil, many coats with sanding incorporated to help fill the pores, and it's fine now. It was a lot of work, but worth the effort. I probably could have just used pore filler in the first place, but had none on hand and more time than money. Tru-Oil doesn't give quite as slick and shiny a coat as nitro or poly, but it's good enough for me, and touchups are simple and quick. I like it.

  7. #6

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    Quote Originally Posted by sgosnell
    I redid the neck with Tru-Oil, many coats with sanding incorporated to help fill the pores, and it's fine now. It was a lot of work, but worth the effort. I like it.
    Cool! Yeah I love the feeling of wood and I experimented with different finishes, varnish, shellac (beautiful amber tint when it cures), oils (danish, linseed, walnut), waxes (carnuba and butcher's wax, that kind of thing) to find something that felt like wood, lasted and didn't react with sweat when playing in the summer. It was the problematic issue of hand sweat that got tacky or reacted to the finish that settled me on nitro that wasn't applied too thick, and sanding to a gloss but not mirror finish.
    How does the Tru-Oil hold up to summer heat and perspiration?

  8. #7

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    Pretty well. Not that we ever get enough heat and humidity to cause perspiration near Houston. It's actually hard to tell the difference between the Tru-Oil and the nitro finish on the body, which isn't really smooth and glossy.

  9. #8

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    This discussion is just what I needed! I’ve got two necks to build 2 guitars. I’m now thinking egg gloss on the maple - following example of PRS Zach Meyers and I guess some fill and then nitro on the mahogany neck.
    I had never thought about the pores, but when I feel the unvarnished necks the difference is indeed enormous. Thanks guys.


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  10. #9

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    I agree , I've found 2000+ wet /dry to bring the Nitro to a satin finish makes for a better feel and doesn't damage .