Superglue Savior

Safety warning: Wear protective vinyl or latex gloves (any kind will do) to keep from getting stuck to your work. Expect to have to change gloves often as they get covered with glue and stuck to the sandpaper, so have fresh pairs at the ready. Work in a well-ventilated area and wear eye protection. Avoid spills or touching superglue—the glue won’t hurt you if you get it on your skin, but it will stick you to anything you touch.

Fig. 1 Using paper along with low-tack draftsman’s tape (blue painter’s tape will also work), I masked off the neck, leaving only the fingerboard un-masked. I left the fingerboard’s rounded edge unmasked (I taped right up to it). Note: Any tape can leave chemical marks and imprints in solvent-based finishes. When you are at your hardware store buying tape, if you notice that a particular tape has a chemical odor, sniff some others. (The less chemical smell a tape has, the more likely I am to buy it.)

To make sure the fingerboard was clean and dust free, I wiped it with a rag dampened with acetone. Notice the dark and light areas—it’s lighter where the finish has been sanded through.

Fig. 2 I poured a small pool of No. 20 superglue onto the backside of a piece of fine-grit wet-sanding paper and quickly wiped it onto the fingerboard surface, back and forth and from end to end. I wiped in circles and figure eights, too. The trick is to not stop; otherwise, the sandpaper—or your hand—might stick. I changed gloves often.

Why are we using the backside of a piece of sandpaper? Wet-or-dry sandpapers are relatively waterproof so that they don’t get soggy and fall apart. Those same properties allow them to be used with superglue. I like to use fine-grit sandpapers for this purpose because they let me feel the work better.

Fig. 3 This is what an application of No. 20 looks like when dry—shiny and a little lumpy. Don’t worry, the dried glue sands and levels easily. In oblique light I could see if I missed an area—see the dry area on the E-string side near the 12th fret?

Fig. 4 Since it was a nice spring day, I did my gluing and sanding outdoors to avoid the fumes. I wiped on two coats of No. 20, stopping for ten minutes in between.

Fig. 5 After the second coat had dried for ten minutes, I sprayed some superglue accelerator onto the backside of a clean piece of wet-sanding paper and quickly rubbed it over the surface, from end to end and sideways. This hardened the glue as I burnished it, because of both the accelerator’s action and the friction of rubbing.

Fig. 6 I lightly sanded the two coats with 220-grit Fre-Cut nonloading paper and a rubber sanding block (to keep the surface flat). I just barely leveled the finish. I applied two more coats, burnished with accelerator, and sanded with 320-grit until the surface appeared powdery.

Now, for a final coat, I poured a silver dollar-size pool of No. 20 glue into a dish and added about one-quarter as much of No. 10 to it—this is the thin finish coat. I applied a couple of these coats and let them dry. After 20 minutes I repeated the accelerator/sandpaper/burnishing steps.

Fig. 7 Now there were about six coats of thin superglue on the fingerboard that needed to be sanded level and polished. I quickly sanded through several grits—400-, 600- and 800-grit gold Fre-Cut nonloading paper.

Fig. 8 Then I switched from dry-sanding to wet-sanding with 1,000-, 1,500-, and 2,000-grit Unigrit paper. Finally, I jumped to Micro-Mesh micro-polishing papers, wet, in 3,400, 4,000, 6,000, and 8,000 grits. (You can skip the Micro-Mesh and still get a nice-looking “wet” look.)

Fig. 9 I enjoy hand-rubbing the finish to a satiny shine; in this case I used medium-grit rubbing compound. This is the same compound I use on my power-buffing machines for large finish work. I applied this finish in less than two hours. That’s a remarkably short time for a finish that’s so goodlooking and durable—and you don’t have to be a pro finisher to apply it, either.