Aqcrylic laquer not checking?

So yesterday I decided to try checking a beat up bass body that I have laying around.... I put it in the freezer for about an hour then put the body in front of a space heater for a half hour. Nothing.

Am I doing it wrong? Haha. The paint is "Monatana Gold" malachite aqcrylic laquer.

So yesterday I decided to try checking a beat up bass body that I have laying around.... I put it in the freezer for about an hour then put the body in front of a space heater for a half hour. Nothing.

Am I doing it wrong? Haha. The paint is "Monatana Gold" malachite aqcrylic laquer.

Technically, its not supposed to check. Paint manufacturers have spent a lot of money since the 50's in research and development to prevent checking. Even a lot of nitro lacquers are tough to get to check.

Technically, its not supposed to check. Paint manufacturers have spent a lot of money since the 50's in research and development to prevent checking. Even a lot of nitro lacquers are tough to get to check.

Thanks for the response!

Hmmmmmm. Guess I'll just leave it be for a while and when boredom strikes again I'll take more desperate measures....

I've only done this once and got OK results by heating the area I wanted checked with a heat gun....just enough to get it hot...not enough to strip paint.

Once I got it hot. I blasted the area with a can of compressed air - the stuff you use to blow dust off negatives. If you shake the can it blows really cold air.

Really hot to very cold in an instant should give you some nice checking.

You can grab a can of air used to clean computer keyboards, turn it upside down and spray the lacquer as well. It comes out cold enough that you don't have to worry about warming up the body.

A lot of lacquers will check, and then heal themselves back up again. I had a few bodies that would check like hell with liquid nitrogen, dry ice or compressed air but they would heal themselves back up within minutes.

Most of the time the checking is self healing as stated above. You have to remember the checking on vintage instruments is due to 2 factors. A) different lawyers used years ago B) those instruments have expanded many times

"All bleeding stops eventually"

Checking is totally hit or miss depending on the brand and formulation.

90% of the "nitro" lacquers used today are acrylic/nitro blends, and have been since the 50's. There is no hard and fast rule that "acrylic lacquer" doesn't check much and "nitro" does.

Case in point - Valspar's "nitro" is very difficult to "force check" and creates very small, subtle patterns. OTOH, Rust-Oleum's Acrylic aerosol clear lacquer is a breeze force-check in larger, very visible patterns...and it also shrinks into the grain like "old" lacquer. Mohawk/Behlens varies from product to product (especially in the Mohawk line where many different types of "lacquer" are available - but even different toners in the same line check differently). You literally have to experiment with each brand's specific products and discover how every one of them reacts.

Getting a realistic, aged look is an art; it takes a lot of practice and a lot of testing of various materials. Translation - it's a very expensive learning process. I've been doing it for 40+ years and still get surprised when a manufacturer makes a (supposedly) subtle change in a coating formula.

FWIW sticking a body in the freezer and then blow drying it is (in my experience - and I'll try almost anything!) one of the least reliable ways of force-checking. The most reliable is a combination of heating/quick-freezing-reheating areas, which has been described partially...but not usually in full detail...in other threads.

The reason it's not described in detail - there are guys here who get paid to do that kind of work and some things are considered "trade secrets" - just like most pickup winders will not tell you more than a rough description of how they make custom models.

Also, this type of work is not easy to do, and even a detailed description would not compensate for lack of experience. It takes ruining a few along the way to fine-tune a personal technique, and most who try checking based on a fairly complete description will end up with very inconsistent results the first few times. Since most who ask are doing *a* body they're going to end up very frustrated unless they do a lot of practicing on scrap wood (something preached by most of the experienced finishers - rule #1 being NEVER try something for the first time on an instrument.