Rattle can lacquering?

[Grumpikins]

I'm wondering about the process of spot lacquering with rattle can lacquer.

Say a larger area of the bell throat where your arm rubs while playing is worn down to the raw brass. How would you prep this? I imagine you would clean it. Buff it? Rouge? Then spray?

Doesnt buffing with rouge for shine leave a layer grease on the brass that will prevent the spray lacquer from adhering properly?

I would like some more specific info about this. Thank you.

[bloke]

For a small area if you degrease you're going to probably have to do it with a rag and that's going to make the area less shiny than you managed to make it (by adding tiny scratches from the rag that you're using to apply the degreaser).

I've got some worn out silver polishing cloths that haven't been corrupted with other substances but really don't have any shining stuff left impregnated in the material. If I'm going to shoot some small area, the last pass I make is with one of those, and I just have to call it good enough. Some people might use worn out flannel...

I usually mask around an area but not right on the edge of it. I leave about an inch all the way around it. I have some lacquer thinner ready and another really clean soft rag. I'll shoot the area, pull off the masking tape, and gently wipe around past the edge of the area with a wet rag with lacquer thinner on it that is wet enough to knock that lacquer off the area past the edge but leave it smooth and yet not make a run. Does it take a little skill? Maybe. Does it look perfect? Of course not. Before spraying it, do I run across the area that I'm going to spray with a propane torch to darken the shiny area to make it more the color of that darkened-from-age brass underneath the surrounding old lacquer? Yes I do that, I also do it during and after the new lacquer is drying. To prevent it from making a huge fire, I blow on it while I'm going across it with the torch. I don't recommend you do that. It takes a lot of experience, and it's still quite dangerous. Also, if things slightly goes wrong, I know what to do to get things back right where they need to be and don't freak out. Many people freak out when something barely begins to catch on fire, and they don't have the wits at that moment to put things right back where they need to be.

I've used OTC rattle can lacquer when I've run out of the good stuff, but the best is Nikolas. They offer both clear and gold tint. Their gold tint rattle can is only lightly gold tinted, and is often helpful in blending a shined up area more into the surrounding area (which has darkened with age). Combining using the torch to darken the brass that has just been shined up along with applying lightly gold tinted lacquer end up with a less noticeable patch.
A negative characteristic of Nikolas is that they don't have the fancy improved fan spraying nozzle like a lot of the OTC rattle cans do, so it's totally on you to distribute it nicely on the surface.

If you screw up - and make a decision that you screwed up before your lacquer dries, just take everything off with the rag with wet lacquer thinner, wipe it off of the dry rag real well, and start over. If you do decide to punt, valve oil (AFTER using lacquer thinner) works pretty well to get the last traces of rattle can lacquer lacquer off that you've decided to remove and then start over.

[Grumpikins]

Interesting. Thank you. So at what point do you buff?

[bloke]

Interesting. Thank you. So at what point do you buff?

You have to get the bare metal as shiny as you are going to decide to get it before you do any of the stuff that I typed above.
But you can darken the bare shiny metal down to a darker color with a torch, so that it's closer to the shiny metal color of the surrounding area that is still lacquered... Does that make sense?

[bloke]

I'm currently slicking out three probably forty-year-old American marching baritones to sell to a school.

The third one (nearly finished) looked the worst. After some buffing, I found out pretty quickly that someone had probably used a buffing machine to strip the whole bell and the large bow and sprayed new rattle can lacquer on it ...but they sprayed it so thin, that polishing those areas was as if they had sprayed nothing on them at all, which explains why it sort of looked like it was lacquered but yet it looked like it wasn't.

[Grumpikins]

Ok. I got it. I have a couple instruments I can practice this on before attempting on something I care more about. Thank you.

[bloke]

It's never going to be invisible, and is always going to be apparent.

That having been said, when I've come fairly close to a color match, I noticed a few years later when I saw the same instrument that the color match was even closer.

Mimicking a specific metallic hue is extremely difficult.