Correct varnish for spruce top.

Nigel_A

My valued Joan Cashimira flamenco guitar has sustained slight damage to the varnish on the sound board and I need to know, if possible, the correct varnish to use in the hope of gaining a blemish free repair. The top is German Spruce, if that is useful to know.
Thanks in advance for any helpful advice or suggestions.
Nigel

TJT1979

What is already on there? I don’t know much about flamenco guitars. I think that the good ones tend to be French Polished using shellac. In this case, more shellac would be the answer but I’d recommend going to an expert as it’s much easier to make things worse than to improve them!

Nigel_A

Many thanks, TJT1979, for your helpful comment.  I think this one is definitely a varnish type finish, but I take your point.

danowens

How bad is the damage? Is the water + heat method possible?

Nigel_A

My apologies, Dan, for only just seeing your helpful comment. Don't know about the 'water and heat method'. Will have to research that.   Have a couple of images but can't see how to attach them.

Andyjr1515

A blemish-free repair is quite a skilled job, even with the right product.  As the others say, it also depends what kind of damage you are trying to cover. 

If it's dints in the wood, then as @danowens says, there are ways of lifting them and often the varnish doesn't need to be touched up.  If (this being a flamenco!) it's nail scratches, then a lot of players would leave them be.  If it did need sorting, then it is usually much easier for the repairer to sand off the original finish and re-varnish.

Photos would help.  There is a guide to how to post photos in the 'New Members' category of the forum.

Nigel_A

Thanks, Andy, and my apologies for the long delay in response but now the evenings are closing in and there is less to do outside i can focus more attentively on this issue. It's not obvious how one adds pictures on this forum but the damage was something which fell onto the face above and to the left of the roseate. It does not appear to have damaged the wood at all merely effectively removed the varnish in an area approximately 6 x 3 mm.

BillDL

It would seem from details I found online that the company name Joan Cashmira was derived from the founder named Jose Antonio Caselles Miralles.  The workshop was/is (website no longer available) in Gata de Gorgos, near Alicante, Spain, and they made about 2,000 guitars a year from a catalogue of 300 models.

I found a blog by somebody who had visited there in 2012 while touring:

https://www.michaelopolko.com/my_weblog/2012/08/joan-cashimira-guitar-maker-spain.html

Of possible interest are the empty 20 litre "Barpimo" varnish cans seen under the workbench in one of the photos:

https://www.michaelopolko.com/.a/6a00e554b9be0b88340177440bf2e4970d-pi

I looked up Barpimo, thinking it may be a a fairly unique kind of varnish that might help figure out what would be best to use for touch ups, but it looks like it is as generic as Ronseal water-based external or yacht varnish.

https://www.barpimo.com/en#/products/varnishes-and-paints/wood-industry/en

Given that that Joan Cashmira also make standard classical guitars that probably have a heavier and glossier lacquer than their Flamenco ones, whatever was in those cans could have been water-based polyurethane.

more

To be honest , unless you have some knowledge and experience of guitar finishes , your not going to be able to do a DIY fix. So, it's live with it of find some one that can fix it for you .