How We Get That Smooth Lacquer Finish

Folkcraft is known for the quality instruments that we put out, and one of the first signs of quality that people see when they look at one of our instruments is the smooth, consistent look of the finish. It isn't easy getting that look, and there are a lot of steps and a lot of time to make things come out right.

We start with a nice freshly sanded instrument. Most woods will be sanded down to 120 grit, but very soft woods will be sanded with 220 grit. For those that aren't familiar with how sandpaper is labeled, the "grit" is the number of grains of sand that fit in an inch - so the bigger the number, the smaller the grains of sand and the smoother your final finish.

Richard will blow all of the dust off the instrument and then spray the finish on the instrument. We use a "catalyzed lacquer" for our finish. Lacquer makes a great finish for instruments since it is hard and it is easy to repair. When you spray a new coat of lacquer it melts into the previous coat so you never see the layers of finish. The lacquer we use is supposed to be non toxic, but we are careful to have good ventilation and to wear protective respirators.

After each coat of lacquer, Richard will sand the instrument. He will start off with relatively rough sandpaper, but work his way up to 600 grit paper, and even start using scrubby pads! Most of you probably have the green scrubby pads in your kitchens - and we use the same kind of pad on the instruments. These pads are made by 3M and come in a variety of strengths. Instead of the green ones that you often see at grocery stores, we use the purple ones and the white ones which are two of the softer varieties.

Depending on which coat of finish and the type of wood, Richard will spend anywhere from 15 minutes to 30 minutes sanding on each instrument for each coat of lacquer.

Here is an instrument after it has been sanded. There is a lot of fine white dust which is the dried lacquer.

The last step in our finish process is the polishing stage. Richard will use "0000" steel wool (which is very fine) and rub out the lacquer. This will get rid of any small imperfections in the lacquer finish and leave it perfectly smooth!