A hard, durable (ie dent resistant) finish?

MattNovak

Like most folks it would seem, I prefer either a thin nitro or an oil / wax finish... but I have a piece of wood which is prone to picking up marks, even from a fingernail. 

Lets say I wanted a shell like finish - a bit like a cheap Squier - how would I best go about it, and would it be beneficial? Alternatively I will just continue with the build and have a relic within 2 gigs.

 

barnstorm

If it's a very soft piece of wood I'd be more worried about stability than marking, but Raptor truck-bed liner or similar might be a left-field option if you're after cheap, easy and tough. No good if you want a smooth finish, though, obviously.

SimonBarden

The poly finishes are harder than nitro or acrylic, with polyester being harder than polyurethane.  I believe Fender now use a thin base coat of polyester with polyurethane on top.  Polyurethane comes in sprays and wipe-on variants, but I'm not sure about polyester as I've never considered using it at all as some of the worst guitars I've played had thick polyester finishes and were lifeless lumps.

The downside is that harder finishses tend to chip, rather than dent, and don't look anything as nice as nitro as they age IMO.

As always, waiting a good length of time for the finish to cure and harden before polishing and using is really important.

What sort of finish are you going for?  Solid, or stained + clearcoat?

One other option would be considering covering the body with thin CA, so it wicks in and hardens the wood once it's dry.  You can then do nitro over that, though GluBoost sell a range of CA based products for achieving complete guitar finishes.  I've used their extra thin CA for strengthening an 'engineered rosewood' fretboard, which certainly gave it a lot more strength and stopped the fibres from falling out, though I've never attempted to finish a guitar in it.  But there will be YouTube vids about it I'm sure if you're interested.