Refinish mandolin?

[guitarlifter]

Has anyone ever sanded the finish off a mandolin and refinished it? I have a mandolin with various scraps and marks, and I've thought about sanding it to bare wood and then applying some tru oil. I've always like the look of natural wood. Is this a bad idea? Thanks!

[allenhopkins]

More detail -- what brand and model mandolin? How much actual damage? What's your level of woodworking expertise?

Not a trivial job, and drastically reduces the market value, whatever that is. If it's a low-to-medium-price instrument, and you have no intention of ever selling or trading it in, you could "customize" it to your heart's content.

I'd only caution that you would need a fair level of effort and care to produce an appearance better than a slightly dinged factory finish, IMHO.

[Paul Busman]

If it's a not too valuable mass produced mandolin, go for it. If nothing else it'll be a fun educational experience. Some of the mass produced instruments have pretty thick finish and I've seen some threads here where people stripped that (not easy!)and have been very happy with a much thinner and lighter finish.

[MikeEdgerton]

Just to put things in perspective, the picture below is of what is possibly the most valuable mandolin in the world. How is your finish compared to this one?

With that said, it's your mandolin, go for it. You might find it difficult if the finish is heavy poly to begin with. This has been done and many people have used tru-oil.

[fscotte]

Yeah I've done it to a completely finished mando of my own. Used an orbital sander with 220 grit at slow speed to remove the lacquer. Once you see color, slow the sander down to slowest speed setting, and remove some of the stain. At that point you just start treating it like a mando in the white, and your sanding it for dye. I switch over to 220 grit by hand once the lacquer is removed. The most difficult part is up under the fretboard extension, the extension itself, and the neck joint. When I was done tho, it looked like ti had never been finished.

Never use finish remover, or any type of solvent. Remove everything dry.

[Br1ck]

I can tell you I would want no part of stripping off the finish on my MK. Whatever industrial grade finish they used was so tuff it took me all afternoon just to do a speed neck on it. Be careful you don't get yourself into that kind of nightmare.

But for a beater the finish is perfect. Fell flat on my face camping, expected to see a destroyed mandolin, but all I got was a broken string, and that mandolin hit the ground hard.

[seg]

I also did a ‘speedneck’ on my MK delux and I used a chemical paint remover that at the time I was using to strip paint off the woodwork in my house.
It took several applications but when I was done I liked it so much I decided to do the whole instrument and I melted the binding.

[MikeEdgerton]

...I used a chemical paint remover...and I melted the binding.

And that is why you don't want to use chemicals to remove the finish

Thanks for posting that.

[Ivan Kelsall]

From Mike E. - " And that is why you don't want to use chemicals to remove the finish " 100% correct !. I always began removing any finish with a sharp steel scraper. I made several scrapers from high-speed steel hacksaw blades,but you can buy ''cabinet scrapers'' in many sizes / shapes these days. After scraping as much of the finish off as you can using a scraper,use sandpaper to get down to the wood.

Using chemical 'strippers' is fine,if you know that it's not going to affect any binding - but you need to scrape the softened finish off anyway,so simply use the scraper to begin with & be careful not to 'dig in',
Ivan

[guitarlifter]

Thanks for the advice! Still not sure if I want to do it, almost leaning towards not, but we'll see. I have moderate woodworking experience, but not much in the way of staining. The mandolin is a Kentucky KM600. To me at least, a decent mandolin. But, it has very low resale value do to a crack in the neck. It is a vertical crack behind the nut, and has not caused me any problems in the 3 years I've had it in crazy midwestern fluctuating weather. But because of that I acquired it very cheap (around $150) so I assume the resale value would not be near what the instrument is actually worth.

[belbein]

So, it's an inexpensive mandolin, and you have woodworking experience: I'd say go for it. I would not try to match the existing finish, in part because I don't have the tools to spray the high-tech finish, and in part because I prefer using a more natural finish (which is why I don't have the tools in the first place).

But either way you have to finish the entire surface so that there's s no direct contrast between the contiguous different finishes: the whole back, the whole front, the entire sides. And I wouldn't refinish the whole thing at the same time, either, because it's a huge job and finish work is the one thing that most demands tireless patience.

One more thing. I would stay away from electric sanders because the sanding surface of the machines is a flat plane but back and top and sides of the instrument are all curves. One thing I've done is this : mount one of those sponge sanding pads on my random orbital sander and use that. It works reasonably well to reduce the amount of sanding or scraping, though at some point you can't avoid elbow grease.

[belbein]

Premature "send" syndrome... Didn't see the thing about the crack in the neck. You can repair that, too. This is the perfect patient to learn on. Repairs are (with Mandolin Cafes experts advice) just not hard to repair. Post a couple of pix, though.

[Mandophyte]

Mike,
Please can you explain to those of us without your experience and knowledge why that is "the most valuable mandolin in the world"?
Cheers,

[John Kelly]

Mike,
Please can you explain to those of us without your experience and knowledge why that is "the most valuable mandolin in the world"?
Cheers,

The caption gives a hint, John. I imagine it was owned by a certain Bill Monroe, who I have heard played something called Bluegrass.

[MikeEdgerton]

It is indeed Bill Monroe's mandolin that is currently in the Country Music Hall of Fame.

http://www.mandolinarchive.com/gibson/serial/73987

This mandolin has a very storied past.

https://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/s...being-vandalzd

[Happy gnome]

I'm currently working on my fourth complete restoration of an instrument - that is to say, refinish, new hardware, etc...

All four have been salvaged from the recycling depot, or from rubbish skips, and they were all in seriously bad condition to begin with. So, no stress for me if it doesn't work out! They've all come back to life, and look and sound great. The first few weren't the best re-finish jobs, but you learn. And, of course, you can redo the redo (if you see what I mean).

So, while I'm hardly an expert I would say go for it. You'll learn a lot. I would definitely recommend staying way from chemicals - they're nasty, they'll melt the binding, they smell terrible, etc. I stripped one guitar with chemicals and it was the worst. It also took just about as long as it would have done to just sand the thing.

I also heartily recommend Tru Oil as a finishing medium.

[belbein]

hG, you are a man after my own heart. Give me a POS instrument which--if I screw it up, I can throw away--and I'm happy to try anything. What I've learned is amazing, and so far, there's only one I've had to actually throw away.

[Happy gnome]

I can't think of a much better way to learn to be honest, at least not for me. There's literally nothing to be lost - I've bought the tools as I've needed them (and after a few years I now have a pretty good collection), and any hardware can easily be reused somewhere else. If the instrument is unrecoverable, you can turf it and there's no loss but time - and the time you spend on it is all valuable experience!

Like you belbein, I've only had to throw one away (and even then I kept the neck!)

[Chris Pritchett]

I've had to remove finish i was not happy with on some of my builds - scraper every time. Just avoid 'digging in'.

[Br1ck]

I can't think of a much better way to learn to be honest, at least not for me. There's literally nothing to be lost - I've bought the tools as I've needed them (and after a few years I now have a pretty good collection), and any hardware can easily be reused somewhere else. If the instrument is unrecoverable, you can turf it and there's no loss but time - and the time you spend on it is all valuable experience!

Like you belbein, I've only had to throw one away (and even then I kept the neck!)

So true. I really only bought my MK to practice on. That it turned out as well as it did was pure gravy. I'm building an Arches kit now. Before I route the binding, I bought an old Stella quality arch top guitar. The neck needed a reset in the worst way,and with a Rosa String Works YouTube video as inspiration. I took the back off, jacked the neck back into a good angle, and reglued the back on after shaving the braces. Had to trim the back some as it now was too long. While I was at it, I did my first fret job.

This guitar had painted on binding, so I routed channels and glued real binding in. I can tell you I'm more confident now doing the work on my mandolin, and I have a solid birch arch top from the late 40s to play on and had a whole lot of fun.

Finding something with the potential to be a good instrument but cheap enough to buy is a problem. A name brand like Martin or Gibson, deludes buyers into asking too much for instruments needing major work. A seventies D18 needing a neck reset, bridge, nut and refret is just not worth more than $500 to me.