varnish ?

[Adrian Levi]

I'm interested to know how luthiers would approach varnishing an instrument in this state / see pics .
I'll be embarking on finishing my almost finished 'french' bass soon . The scroll and heel have what I believe to be the original finish ,perhaps underneath some clear later applied finish . Its always been near impossible to match color exactly but I'll try again I guess , or would it be better to strip the remaining color off the scroll and heel and complete the entire bass in one exact color / I'd be loathe to do that though .... any opinions and advice would be great

[Ken Smith]

Don't take anything off. This bass has been Raped enough already. IF that Scroll belongs to that Bass then at least you have something left original to go by in matching the color and texture to the original.

I had a 20 year old Italian Bass recently that was obviously stripped and re-colored from its original red to yellow. The Scroll was still the original Red so I had the Bass over-varnished leaving the yellow as the undercoat and now the Bass looks uniform.

Never take off original Varnish of a fine instrument. I personally think it's an irreversible Sin to commit.

'Restore' means to bring it back to original. 'Repair' means to fix. 'Alter' means to change. Alter can also mean to 'Butcher' so becareful what you touch and what you change.

[Adrian Levi]

Originally Posted by Ken Smith

Don't take anything off. This bass has been Raped enough already. IF that Scroll belongs to that Bass then at least you have something left original to go by in matching the color and texture to the original.

I had a 20 year old Italian Bass recently that was obviously stripped and re-colored from its original red to yellow. The Scroll was still the original Red so I had the Bass over-varnished leaving the yellow as the undercoat and now the Bass looks uniform.

Never take off original Varnish of a fine instrument. I personally think it's an irreversible Sin to commit.

'Restore' means to bring it back to original. 'Repair' means to fix. 'Alter' means to change. Alter can also mean to 'Butcher' so becareful what you touch and what you change.

Its sad to think that this bass had its finish stripped for some reason or other ( in the 60's ) I'm told.

I've had the bass for about two years now and decided to remove the new varnish as it was chipping and just plain badly applied . Now I'm stuck with a
'naked' but FANTASTIC sounding bass , with one 'protective' layer of clear oil varnish . I am not going to do the job myself but would like to be armed with some insight in order to know what to look for and expect etc ..