Cleaning Joins prior to joining

[needsmorecowbel]

What would be the best thing to clean a join with other than a lint free cloth? Preferably something that will reveal a little grain so i can properly book match the timbers...Naptha hasn't been getting too great a wrap on this forum lately (or so it seems) so digger's turps???? Pure Alcohol??? Just need a nudge in the right direction.

[Bob Connor]

I don't wipe joints with anything. Not even Cocobolo - but I do join that withy epoxy.

Regards

[Nick]

Couldn't see Alcohol doing the joint any harm Stu if you are just trying to line up figure across a join. Or if you are using Titebond et al then don't fully clamp the join & when you wipe the initial excess squeezeout off with a damp cloth, this should highlight the grain/figure either side of the join & it's not too late to realign if necessary with a gentle tap or push, then continue clamping.

[woodrat]

Hi Stu, for exotics like Rosewood and Ebony I give a (s)wipe over with some Acetone on a clean cotton cloth. For my spruce joints I do the same thing with rain water that only just dampens the cloth to pick up the dust left on the surface after final jointing with sandpaper.

Cheers

John

[Allen]

I never wipe joints either. Good light and my reading glasses are all I use. If I was to use something it would be metho or acetone, but both of those will pull out resins from some hardwoods possibly contaminating a joint.

[Kim]

What would be the best thing to clean a join with other than a lint free cloth? Preferably something that will reveal a little grain so i can properly book match the timbers...Naptha hasn't been getting too great a wrap on this forum lately (or so it seems) so digger's turps???? Pure Alcohol??? Just need a nudge in the right direction.

"Or so it seems""????

I really would like to know where ANYONE has ever indicated ANYWHERE on ANY forum where they have had an issue when using Naphta in relation to pre-cleaning glue joints that had caused a problem???

To my knowledge only 'TWO' people on THIS forum have mentioned any issue which was very specific to the diggers brand and did not suggest any concern with naphtha as a formulation whatsoever. Those two members has suggested that this particular 'band' of naphtha had left what 'they' perceived to be an "oily residue" when wiping or cleaning a gloss surface. Neither had suggested that this "oily residue" had caused any issue whatsoever, only that it is something 'they' had noticed. As I recall there was most certainly no mention of naphtha having 'earned' a "bad wrap" for anything at all that had cause a problem, especially in relation to the pre-cleaning of glue joints.

It should also be made clear that no one else, including myself or Jim, has experienced any "oily residue" whatsoever when using the exact same diggers product, or at least no one else has come forward to indicate that they have/had. I have also NEVER heard of this oily residue before from any other source in relation to naphtha. To me this indicates that the reported experience from those two members, whose opinion it must be said I do respect, remains inconclusive.

This is because 'we', and perhaps they to, do not know or perhaps have not considered, what may have caused their issue other than the product itself. For instance it was suggested a number of times through the thread upon which you have based your "bad wrap" conclusion, that there was a very 'real' potential for a mislabeling to have occurred due to the almost identical nature of white spirits and naphtha. As explained the ONLY difference between the two is the addition of a retarder added to standard naphtha/shellite to increase its flash point making it safer to use in the dry cleaning industry. The chances of that retarder being an "oily' substance are highly probable because I would imagine that is what it would take to decrease the speed of evaporation.

There is also potential for an un-noticed pre-existing contamination to have been in the rag/rags used to apply the naphtha. This could easily go un-noticed because many oily substances 'dry out' when washed in detergent but they are not removed altogether. A rag with such residue may 'look' and 'feel' clean and uncontaminated, but when you add naphtha, it would dissolve this residue back into liquid, that is what naphtha does and is precisely why its used in dry cleaning, and right there is your "oily residue".

There is also a very real possibility that an 'all too common' silicone based guitar polish had at some stage been applied to an instrument by who knows how many previous owners before it comes in for a service and set. Wiping such a guitar down with naphtha will of course leave and "oily residue" on a gloss finish. Naphtha is one of the few things that will eventually remove that shit from the surface of a finish because it does break it up and thin it down. But even naphtha will take many applications and lots of fresh rag before the residue will be totally gone. Is this the 'inert' oily residue???

My point in writing all of this is to point out that forming baseless assumptions upon what are the clearly conflicting experiences of others, especially when nothing conclusive is know to even suggest the causation of the negative, and posting them in an open forum in such a way that would suggest they have firmer grounds, is sure to cause even MORE confusion by propagating misinformation.

The potential here, even with an "Or so it would seem" disclaimer, is for those new to this craft who may search and find this topic in future not just to be steered away from one of 'THE' single most useful substances this craft has at its disposal, but to send them from here to the rest of the world wide web armed and spreading misinformation with a dash of poetic right as if it were based upon 'their own' experience when the fact is they have never even used the product.

Believe me this sort of thing really does happen and anyone who has frequented guitar building forums for a while will know exactly what I am talking about. I have seen it pollute the internet all over, it really is a cancer to the benefits of shared information sites such as this and I feel we have a responsibility to avoid the spread. To do this we need to be careful when expressing a concern about a product or method to tell the whole story. We need to provide links to any material we form 'our' conclusions on if they are not based upon our own experience, and we need to be very clear that should diametrically apposed positions be held within that material that people are encouraged to read the whole story for themselves before they form their own conclusion.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3367

By the way, I only ever use turps for cleaning oil based finishes from brushes. I had always thought that turps was in fact just reeeealy thin oil and that is why it can clean oil based products....it thins them into solution....but I don't 'know' that to be true. Regardless I would not put turps anywhere near a joint to which I was about to apply glue....shoot the joint with a plane, and stick it together straight away, that is my advise.

Cheers

Kim

[DarwinStrings]

.Naptha hasn't been getting too great a wrap on this forum lately (or so it seems)

Sigh...I give up

Jim

[needsmorecowbel]

apologies...it would appear i have been confused by those people who have had issue...

[kiwigeo]

Just to clarify my position:

1. I'm pretty sure Ive never stated that Ive had problems with the Mitre 10 sourced Shellite I've used on occasions.
2. The Shellite I've used isn't Diggers brand.
3. Even though I haven't had problems with the Shellite I'm using Ive stopped using it because Im just not comfortable with the oily nature of the stuff. I've already had to lift a back on a classical because of contamination (probably silicon in this case) so I guess I'm being more cautious because of that bad experience but that's just the way I work.
4. No chance of the oily residue coming from the rags I'm using..the rags are the ones use for my french polishing and they're clean and lint free.

As far as cleaning a joint before gluing up I generally only do this with oily woods such as rosewood and I use either IMS meths or acetone.


Martin

[needsmorecowbel]

I will try and keep the stupid questions to a minimum...Spreading misinformation was not my intention at all

[Kim]

Stu,

There was no stupid question involved at all. The issue I had was with your suggestion that there is a post 'somewhere' on this forum in which people were advising against the use of naphtha like there was some reported problem associated with its use when that is simply not the case. Sometimes there is more in what we don't say so the record had to be set straight. My own extensive use of naphtha has never uncovered a single issue. In fact it is by far the best substance to use for checking grain and colour because it evaporates off of before it can penetrate into the wood. This means that it will not leach colour from wood anywhere near as much as products like turps and metho will when used on species like Cocobolo and WA Sheoak.

I find the product near indispensable for all sorts of things from cleaning electronic components such as switches, PCBs etc, pre cleaning planes etc after flattening the sole, pre clean for metal or any other surface prior to painting, removing adhesive gum, cleaning old electric guitar parts such as bridges, saddle pieces, screw, tuners etc, etc...you do this with a 50/50 shelite/naphtha and 3 in 1 oil soak first. I also use it as a wipe down after flatting a finish between coats to lift dust and even for wet sanding areas around exposed wood to avoid swelling with water. I use it for cleaning player gunk from fretboards prior to a light wipe of lemon oil and for cleaning any finish without causing damage.

Its really wonderful stuff and the list of positives just goes on and on so I would hate to see anyone put off from what has been many guitar tech's 'little bottle of magic' for so many years now.

When I die I want to be pickled in naphtha so when they find a cure for what killed me I can be bought back to life..First thing I'll do is go visit Walt Disney's frozen head and carve a big "L" in its forehead for getting it so wrong....naphtha m'boy, nectar of the gods..

Replace the word 'monorail' with naphtha and it don't rhyme...but do it anyway .


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Cheers

Kim

[needsmorecowbel]

Problem is i have this bloody wedge of curly maple...nice piece for a violin back but the dud(e) who cut it in the factory didn't cut it in down the guts.. so there is like a bloody gap between the top and bottom... 3mm gap max at the edge...I need to get the back dead flat so i can join it properly but the way that the dude with the band saw has cut it has made my life that much harder...any ideas? BARGH!!!!!

[charangohabsburg]

The picture is too tiny, I hardly can see it. Can you make it bigger please?

so there is like a bloody gap between the top and bottom... 3mm gap max at the edge...I need to get the back dead flat so i can join it properly but the way that the dude with the band saw has cut it has made my life that much harder...any ideas?

What about getting out the hand plane?

[kiwigeo]

Shooting board and jointing plane. You need to end up with one side of the joined wedges flat dont you? If this is the case then this is the side that lies face down on the shooting board.

[Allen]

A ridiculously sharp plane and a Shooting board are your friends.

[Nick]

Not necessarily a bad saw job Stu, just the way it went through the bandsaw, as bits of wood do i.e they aren't cut to within one thousandth of an inch of each other, it's still a manual process. As others suggest get your 'flat' side & plane it flat, any discrepency in height between the two after that, you can plane off the offending amount, you could even plane both bits until there's a land (flat) area on both in which you could use to see the figure better (providing you don't end up making it under thickness of course!). I've had to do this on more than one occasion, just the vagueries of sawn wedges of timber.

[Mike Thomas]

I may be misunderstanding the problem, but it is not the back (i.e the face that will form the interior of the violin)that you should be worrying about at this stage, unless it is warped. If it is warped, you only need to plane off enough so that it sits on a flat surface without rocking. Flatten the back after the wedges have been joined. What you should be doing first is getting the joint edges planed true and close to right angles to the back. After the wedges are joined, you flatten the back. The same process of course, for the top. Incidentally, planing the joint is usually done by holding the wedge, jointing surface uppermost, in a vice, jigged so that the wedge is held firmly without distortion.
I may be mistaken but I don't think any blame at all can be attached to "the dude in the factory". What you have seems to be standard issue violin maker's raw material.
I strongly recommend the Johnson and Courtnall book. It covers all of this, and a thousand other things that you will have to deal with, very clearly and authoritatively. It is not a cheap book, but it is cheaper than a nice wedge of European maple,

[DarwinStrings]

apologies...it would appear i have been confused by those people who have had issue...

No need for apologies Stu, I was expressing my frustration at having pointed out that after 100's of glue joints cleaned with Diggers Naphtha not failing that there was still some doubt as to the wisdom of using naphtha. I agree too that there is no such thing as a stupid question, better to ask than fail and if you do fail ask why and find out how you failed. That will help you not fail next time.

I am wondering if your dilemma with joining these plates is that because of the two different thicknesses you can't use the tape method, you could just change method to using wedges or sash clamps etc to join them then shoot it to shape.

Jim

Someone please turn up the Tele!

[needsmorecowbel]

Cheers guys yeah the plates were never wobbling and fairly even so i shall shoot that join...Practice my hide glue skills on some other bits of wood, clamp it up and get back to yas