cleaning before patching lacquer

[jartzh]

I found after I put furniture polish on my rosewood that I had sanded thru some of it. so I need to add a little lacquer. but I dont know how to clean the area before I apply the lacquer. I dont want to use lacquer thinner and loosen any more of the finish up.

[tippie53]

what polish did you use? I hope you didn't use pledge that has silicone and will play havoc with nitro.

[jartzh]

it could have been Pledge. something my wife handed me. I had it all steel wooled down, and dusted and it looked dull. so I thought some furniture polish was the answer.
I didn't use Nitro. its the canned Behlen stuff.
so yes its probably the wax I need to remove so I can put more lacquer on it.

[tippie53]

with pledge you have done was is called a silicone infection , this will make using nitro very difficult. You will see a lot of tiny bubbles and fish eye in it. Never use Furniture polish on guitars.

[B. Howard]

My routine for these type repairs are first a thorough cleaning with some naptha and a clean toothbrush. After that is dry I wipe down with some DA, this may reactivate the lacquer and make it a bit tacky. Be quick but complete with this step. After that dries sand the area to be repaired with 220, tac rag off and apply a seal coat of thinned lacquer. If the prep went well the seal coat should take without any pinholes, if not not repeat the sand and seal steps sanding very lightly until it does and then build some finish as normal and buff out.

Naptha is good at removing waxes but not silicones, DA is good at removing silicones but not waxes. You may be surprised how many instrument polishes contain silicones.

[jartzh]

what is DA?

[tippie53]

denatured alcohol

[Tarhead]

What Brian said plus go find the Pledge and toss it. After cleaning, if Fisheye still shows up, add one drop of Fisheye Flow Out/Fisheye Preventer/other names to ~a cup/250ml of lacquer and try to coat one of the Fisheyes with a small brush. If you still can't cover the spot add another drop to the cup, mix and re-try. Repeat until it stays covered. Then coat the entire surface w/the treated lacquer as you intended. Strangely enough, these products have Silicone in them. Anything touched by the treated lacquer gets permanently contaminated so plan to toss it or segregate it for future Fisheye problems.