HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN LACQUER BLANK DISCS

[flozki]

okay so i did my first laquer.hehe

i used an old 10inch laquer as a base. removed the coating with hot water.
then i bought nitrocellulose laquer (zaponlaquer)
made a frame with scotch tape around the plate. filled the holes with scotch.
then i dropped the laquer in and distributed on the surface with a piece of cardboard. it is quite thick already and dries very fast.
afiter an hour the laquer was already dry.
i had only very few air bubbles , because of my lousy distribution.

so it is way from perfect. but it is my first test.
for me the main question is if i can buid up easy a laquercoating that is thick enough.and it seems that i can do...
hope to cut beginning of next week.

also i did this one without castor oil.
next step will be with castor oil.

also i have to build some kind of cabine...out of a simple box and ventilators...

Question to you:
when dried it gave some kind of orange peel looking surface.not very extreme but still visible.
any ideas how to avoiding this?

[markrob]

Hi Flo,

Sounds like great progress! As I understand it, orange peel can be avoided by adding some retarder to the lacquer mix. It slows the drying time. I believe better temperature and humidity control also is helpful, but that's hard to do. Here is a link with more info:

http://www.woodfinishsupply.com/LacquerRetarder.html

Hope this helps.

Mark

[mossboss]

Hey Flo
Glad to see you at it The castor oil will slow down drying time so you will get better results It will spread the nitro molecules apart allowing the solvents from the inner parts to evaporate easier and it will give a softer coating I doubt that it will get rid of the orange peel alltogether The surface of the coating dries up first while it is still liquid underneath as the solvent tries to escape boiling off from under it creates the uneveness If you look under a mag glass you will see little vortices with tiny holes in the center
You need to try to slow that down Castor oil certainly helps but it migrates out of the mix after a while If you place them in a cabinet with a bit of positive air pressure you will get good results They should be more than good enough for rekocuts and recordios, but Pro use ?
I have quite a few like 100 or so with orange peel on them from our experiments some of them are almost there The ready made Nitro lacquers are just not going to do it since most of them are made for application to timber which at its natural "dry" state have about 18% water content in them which seems to tame the coating Since we are trying to use metal as a base the way to prevent orange peel is to give them lots of very thin coats until you built up the thicknes you need That has been my experience so far and it works with or without castor oil Harder coat without, softer with, about 10-15% is Ok to cut without the chip shattering while is being cut I am quite confident one can get there by adjusting the coating rate as well as material viscosity and plasticiser qty by coating them with a number of thin coats in four stages allowing them to semidry in between The ready made lacquers do not allow you to play around and no manufacturer is willing to disclose what they use The best ready made material we got to so far is the stuff sold for lacquer coating of Guitars If you want to thin it down use methanol as it will slow down the drying time and nearly prevent orange peel The most expensive ones are no better than the cheapest for what we need to do This is what I have found out so far anyway No one has ever disclosed what they use in the making of masters that I have been able to establish in many years of searching Straight Nitrocellulose has not being used for many years now The stuff from the chip jar burns rather than explodes Acetone will disolve it, formaldehyde will only partially dissolve it which indicates the pressence of di and triacetate as well as pthalate in the mix Since it will not dissolve at low pH but it does at a higher ph level If any castor oil is used which I am not completely convinced of, it is very little indeed
In conclusion: Ready made lacquers will do for semi-rough to reasonable plates if you coat the thinly a few times
For plates as good as Apollo Transco or MDC or Pyral from the past one needs to go a lot further
If we can not resurrect good old Paracelsus the Alchemist for some input for a quick solution, we just need to keep on chipping away at it Flo
Cheers

[Bratwurst]

"we just need to keep on chipping away at it"
*groan* nice one, moss.

Maybe this is sacrilege, but has anyone tried polishing or planing as a final step? Maybe something could be made for a drill press or like the idea of a wood planer? I saw a small press for drymounting photos that had very fine adjustments.
or maybe even a blade mounted in place of your cutting head? (In desperation, I just levelled a wonky turntable mat within 1 mil this way. a testament to the sp10 motor.)

I dunno, just some brainstorming. Seems like if one could just "skim" off the orange peel, you're off to the races. Maybe a good alternative to those of us who are not chemical engineers anyway.

[mossboss]

Hey Sausage
Who is the Chemical engineer any way I am just a vinyl pressing man or do a cut or two I would not be looking for an alchemist if this was the case
Any way I can tell you one thing Any one that ever made these things kept their cards very close to their chest Not much if anything is published By the way there was a patent for a direct to PTFE cut some years back that they machined the S/S backing with a diamond bit to 5 microns If you can do that than what the heck you got good lacquers It makes sense of course if you are cutting on them any imperfections would have to be less than your machine is capable of doing by at least a factor of minimum 3 if not 4
So stop Groaning
Cheers

[Bratwurst]

Hey Moss
You are right, I am stuck in lo-fi headspace.
I thought since there is probably a minority of chemists here and more mechanically inclined people, maybe there is more of a mechanical solution... 5 microns is a bit daunting though.
Well heck I got some 600grit sandpaper in the back and a Black&Decker palm sander!
Well, like I said just some brainstorming. 1,000 crap ideas before 1 good one, right? uh... right?

BTW I wasn't groaning over your post, just the pun "keep chipping away at it". Sorry if I miss-communicated.

[mossboss]

Hey Bratworst
No offence man not an issue I do a lot of groaning myself any way You should have been there a couple of night ago I had lacquers in the baths 4 of them going along fine We lost power from the mains after some idiot in a motor car hit the main power pole in the street We got it back in a few minutes but I lost all of the amp/hour readings as I was not near them So it than become a guess work to reset them so as to get the right thickness End result They did come out with a perfect face but twice as thick and not usable Groan and more groan and than some more groaning So keep at it not a problem
Cheers

[mratx]

Has anyone tried making a disc out of shellac? Not the old style record shellac formula, just normal furniture shellac. The benefit of shellac is that it is fairly easy to put a very smooth finish on, since it dissolves with denatured alchohol even after hardening. So you could layer it on your substrate, then essentially french polish it smooth. I think if you use a standard formulation it's slightly softer than laquer, but I don't know by how much.

[mossboss]

Hey all
Any material used to make lacquers which needs touching up after coating is out the window in so far as acetates for cutting music on are concerned
Cheers

[001diskey]

Bit late to the party but I gave it a try.

I used Watco lacquer that I picked up at Home Depot and castor oil sourced online. Going to use lamp black universal colorant to make it opaque but for now I'm just keeping it clear until the bottle I ordered arrives.

I did two discs, one with 10% oil and the second 5%
the 10% disc is very soft, almost like wax.
The 5% disc is perfect.

To coat it evenly I used a spinning metal platter that I had originally built for use with my lathe. I poured the mixture on while spinning so that it spread outwards.
I used 100mL total to coat one side of a 12" disc (95mL lacquer 5mL castor oil). The thickness was good the first time, so no need to worry about letting it thicken or multiple coatings.
The base disc I used was aluminum.

Dust and fumes are a big issue. I plan to make a positive air chamber to coat and dry the discs in but if you don't need a perfect surface just do it outside and put something over top to keep large debris away.

The 5% disc cuts well but is very noisy. I don't think that's a fault of the lacquer since I got the same amount of noise cutting an old acetate blank.
I imagine it has to do with my stylus not being heated and my inexperience cutting lacquers.

Hope this helps someone!

[blacknwhite]

Very Nice to hear someone actually tried it; Thanks for posting!.

So my big question I've always wondered:

How hard was it to mix the oil with the lacquer?

I always wondered if it would mix or try to stay separate like oil and water.

I envisioned it might require some kind of "blender" but with volatile vapors like laquer, that seemed too scary for me to even think of. . .
And also, that would create air bubbles, requiring something like a vacuum chamber to remove, and how would you remove the air from a chamber when it has volatile / flammable fumes that could be ignited by the heat of a vacuum pump?. . .

So, how did it go mixing the oil and laquer?
"Easy / straightforward"?