Burled Walnut Repair Possible?
 

Hi folks. I've noticed new cracks in the gorgeous wood above the glove box, and center console. Is it even possible to repair these types of cracks? Thanks!

Yes, someone more knowledgeable in woodwork will probably chime in, but what the wood veneers in these interiors amounts to is a thin panel of wood with a lacquer on top. The lacquer is similar to a clear coat. The cracks are on the lacquer/clear coat, not the wood itself. The fix is usually to sand it down to bare wood and reapply a lacquer.

Thanks! I do hope that is indeed the case. I'll have to search around for a restoration expert around here. Finding a good one seems to be a difficult proposition.

Glandaniel, thanks! I've always wondered exactly what the finish is. While lacquer is the most beautiful, its not the most durable finish around. But it'll be easy to repair. Please don't take this wrong but, are you pretty sure the modern Jaguar finishes is lacquer?

To the poster, if your tempted to do it yourself, look into "crack repair guitar lacquer finish". Nearly every acoustic guitar I can think of is lacquer finished, though by design they use a much thinner coat. My point is that cracks in a guitar finish are so easily noticed that folks want them repaired Asap.

John

No, I actually have no clue what the finish is. All I know is that it can be refinished.

Johnken, thank you. I'd be a bit nervous to try it myself, especially after seeing prices for replacement parts, which would likely mean replacement of all 5 pieces in the cockpit with like pieces from one other car, or the differences in the shades of wood may not match. I''d really love to keep the car as close to original as I can, within reason. It's really been a saga of my own fault, since I neglected the car for awhile, to my great regret. Now I have the engine parts fixed, so I want to make the interior as nice as I can, and get the car re-painted, but the cracks will really take away from the aesthetic.

The problem with sanding down to bare wood is that you will likely end up with a color change. The lacquer does age. And of course the veneer is very thin so you must be careful. One member had all the wood refinished and it looked pretty good, but after a year the grain was showing because the finish shrinks and it wasn't really thick enough.

I had some limited success by filling the cracks with a few layers of super glue, wet sanding with 400 then 600, and spraying a couple of layers of acrylic clear coat. After a couple weeks of drying I wet sanded with 1000 then 2000 and buffed. When the light was right it was still possible to find the filled cracks, but only if you knew where to look.

Hmmm. Perhaps then a wood restoration expert might not be the right person to ask about this. Why does everything about this car have to be so complicated? :-)

contact Saul at British Autowood - he would be the best person to assist and if you are inclined, he could also refinish

Google "retired woodworkers clubs" for your city or surrounding area and see what results turn up. Go to the club websites and call or e-mail the listed contact person. These guys have decades of experience in repairing all sorts of different issues with various applications of wood and are usually more than willing to help you....

Thank you! I just sent him an email. Impressive site he has. Those pictures of the wood he refinishes are exquisite!

Thank you, Jon. I will do this if the British Autowoods person is not available. I am completely in love with beautiful wood.

for the same reason divorce is so expensive, "......because it's worth it...."

Gotta give you that one :-).

credit where credit is due..... afaik, that is a Willie Nelson quote.

Z

PS. I have a small crack also, but mine appears to be in the wood itself. In my case, I fear making something worse, or even start a new problem, so I'm inclined to leave it alone.

These panels are actually plastic with a very thin wood veneer on them, they are not wood backed. Because the plastic and the wood have different coefficients of expansion, they will continue to crack. There is not much percentage in repairing them just to have them crack again.

How can you tell?

"Lacquer" has traditionally referred to nitrocellulose lacquer, which was used on acoustic instruments and in Jaguar interiors for many years, probably through the '70s. But over the last few decades, automakers and the larger guitar makers have switched to high-solids Ultraviolet light (UV) curable finishes to speed up production time and also reduce the emissions of Volatile Organic Compounds to comply with increasingly stricter EPA regulations. These finishes cure in just minutes under UV light, and can be sanded out and polished just like traditional lacquer.

It is possible that the finish used on the wood in X100s was solvent-based, but it is not nitrocellulose lacquer. It is probably a high-solids urethane or polyester. The finishes used in more recent Jaguars are almost certainly water-reduced UV curable urethanes or polyesters, since these have become the industry standards. Even some smaller guitarmakers are now using UV finishes. Here's an example:


Hardwood floor refinishers are now using this type of finish:


These modern finishes can still be repaired by a good luthier or crafty do-it-yourselfer by the superglue (cyanoacrylate) "drop fill" method that RJ described. Depending on how much the cracked areas have lightened, a little stain or aniline dye may need to be worked into the cracks first. This method can even help when the wood itself is cracked. Here's a video of master luthier Dan Erlewine showing how it's done:


I replaced the veneer on some of the panels in our '93 Vanden Plas with Carpathian Elm burl veneer I found at the local Woodcraft store. I took a couple pieces of trim into the store and picked the raw veneer that had the most similar grain, then used aniline dye to achieve a close color match. I used grain filler and many coats of a high-solids water-based acrylic "lacquer" clearcoat, which I then wet-sanded and rubbed out in the traditional manner to a mirror gloss.

Cheers,

Don

Jaguar Walnut
 

I sent some of my wood to British Autowood (Saul) and the results were wonderful. I have heard the finish is polyester - believe it or not, and not easy to work with.
For me, it was worth the price of a pro. I also got a shifter knob from them.

On my main crack, the lacquer is unblemished but you can look thru it and see the crack. So I'm calling that a wood crack. It's always a possibility that my eyesight is playing tricks on me, but the other wood dash "cracks" I've seen had an obvious lacquer flaw that you can feel with a fingernail. I've tried taking a photo of it, but the shine makes the flaws impossible to see.

I do have a small lacquer flaw at the edge of the wood, but it is nearly invisible, so I'm ignoring it for now.



Z