Your favorite hard durable finish for soft woods?

[Dan Hehnke]

I'm refinishing a bass I made a while ago, that has a port orford cedar body, and a burl camphor top. Both are pretty soft and prone to dents and scratches. What is your favorite finish for this type of thing? Lacquer and shellac both don't seem hard enough. I haven't experimented too much with other things since I usually just use True-Oil. How about Rustins plastic coating, or table top finishes? Thanks for any recommendations!

[Clay Schaeffer]

If an impact is hard enough to dent the wood, it will also mar most finishes. If you encapsulate the wood in fibreglas as they do cedar strip kayaks and canoes you might get some actual protection out of the finish.

[Dan Hehnke]

So yes, epoxy would do a good job of being a hard finish and protect wood from dents. Very hard to level, sand and polish though I'd suspect. I know you were kidding, but it's true.

How about Behlen's Rock Hard Table Top Varnish? Any users? Sounds like a decent candidate.

I know that guitars/basses I've seen at the store with soft woods have a pretty hard finish on there, that is much harder than the laquer or shellac I've used. And looks decent.

[Woodrow Brackett]

The hardest finish I'd put on a musical instrument is Polyester.

[Brad Heinzen]

I've done a couple of CG's with varnished tops (both WRC), and I was amazed at how dent resistant they were compared to FP'd tops. I didn't think a bit of finish would make such a difference, especially considering that I went pretty light on the varnish for the tops. They sounded fine, by the way. I'd say the varnish didn't do anything to hurt the tone of the guitars.

[Rodger Knox]

The Rockhard Varnish is harder/tougher than TruOil, but not as hard as nitro.
And Clay probably wasn't kidding, epoxy has been used as a finish by some of the people here.
CA (superglue) might also be an alternative, it's also been used sucessfully. I've used CA to pore-fill bloodwood, the application can be painful if you're not careful, but it works great. I sanded back to wood and put shellac & TruOil over it, but if I had put on another coat of CA I could have level sanded and polished it without sanding through.

[Dan Hehnke]

Wow really, the Rockhard isn't even as tough as Nitro? Ok, good to know.

Man, I can't stand the fumes even using CA for small stuff, I can't imagine using it for a whole guitar...

I guess I'll probably just stick to good ol True Oil since at least it's easy to repair, since I don't want to mess with Polyester or Epoxy either..

[Mark Day]

The hardest finish I'd put on a musical instrument is Polyester.

Funny. Check out the this thread:
http://www.mimf.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=541

Polyester is indeed tough stuff. I would hate to have to remove it!