Aqua-Coat?

[ken cierp]

Jay -- as I indicated that has been my experience with all these type of WB filler formulations, and when you get enough on to finally fill the pores a white haze is noticeable. I am not surprised by your review.

[Jim Ball]

I'm still experimenting with the Aqua-Coat. Here's my results so far:

The first instrument I tried it on, I was not happy with the results. I did not thoroughly clean off the excess before it dried and I had to do a hell of a lot of sanding to get back down to the surface of the wood. I discovered this the hard way when I applied a coat of varnish and the Aqua-Coat showed up as milky white spots! I had to wipe off the varnish with mineral spirits before it dried, then sand, sand, sand. I did end up with the glossiest finish I've ever achieved. It's a real gorgeous mirror finish.

I'm trying again on a second instrument and this time making sure I wipe off the excess. I'm using paper towels like Robby shows in the video, but I'm using a clean square of towel every time I switch from rub-in to wipe-off. I also have only put on two coats of Aqua-Coat instead of the three he recommended. I'm ready to apply varnish and will post my results. I'll add a photo of the first instrument later today.

(12/12/14 update: apologies for the delay, but I'm still trying to get a photo that does justice to the finish.)

[Tim Benware]

Anxious to see because it looks very promising time and effort wise.

[Tim Benware]

For anyone interested and hasn't already seen this in my build post, I used the aqua-coat and really like it. Go here to read:

viewtopic.php?f=30&t=2115&p=19583#p19583

[Jay McClellan]

It looks like the biggest difference between Tim's procedure that worked well and my procedure that worked poorly is the sealer coats. The Aqua-Coat instructions say to seal it first, but then they say it's optional - so I opted out of doing it. Seems like it's not optional after all. One might think that the first layer of Aqua-Coat would take the place of the sealer but apparently not so much. I'll try it Tim's way next time.