I will not pit my fading memory against yours but I seem to recall that Guild is using nitro in the Oxnard facility, and that such use is in line with the California regulations.
YES.
I'll let some of the West Coast locals chime in but "no nitro in CA" seems to have reached the status of Urban Myth.
BOY HOWDY.
I'm getting a little tired of rebutting it, myself.
Here's the deal:
The
SOLVENTS that make Nitrocellulose a
sprayable lacquer are the regulated chemicals.
When they vaporize as the lacquer dries, or even while it's being sprayed, it's the solvent gases that are associated with the formation of photochemical smog, depletion of the ozone layer, and sundry respiratory disorders.
Equipping a spray booth with proper filtering to remove the solvent gasses
is very expensive.
The costs of using it are different but but many companies have decided to bear the costs.
Yes any company that is willing to bear cost of installing the right filtering equipment in a certified spray booth and train employees in proper use AND
clean-up can get certification to spray.
Oxnard was
certified before they ever even started up the production line.
It IS true that CA upped the ante from the early '00's standards a few years back and lowered the allowable emission standards (requiring expensive retrofitting of existing equipment and re-certification) along with other measures like outlawing retail sales of spray paints that used the solvents and even things like old fashioned spot-removers, which had an impact on the dry-cleaning industry.
It's also been pointed out by Twocorgis at least a couple of years agothat California Air Resource Board standards have been adopted in many industrial areas all over the country, which explains why New Hartford's spray booth was worth transporting to CA (if that's correct, that's the first time I recall hearing that report, but it's certainly a viable proposition)
Is there an approximate year that using nitro on guitars became the norm, or did it vary widely by manufacturers? How do you know if a used guitar you bought has a nitro finish or an old style lacquer finish?
These days I'd hazard that "Nitro" (short for NCL) IS considered to be the "old style lacquer finish".
"Lacquer" is a generic term and when it comes to guitars, unless you're talking pre-'20's or specialty-built instruments, up through the '70's, chances are it IS NCL.
Poly started showing up on the Asian imports of the late '70's and its use as a cost-saving measure gradually spread to the low-end market until the environmental pressures on NCL really started impacting cost.
Taylor changed the game by making poly lacquers their standard finish.
You can test nitro by its solubility in acetone (Nail polish remover). If you can find a spot on the guitar you're willing to test or get a small chip of the finish, it'll dissolve in acetone.
Poly's pretty durable, impervious to solvents and even hard to scratch, so if it's hard to get a chip of finish to test that'll probably be indicative of a poly finish right there.
Nitro Cellulose Lacquer was invented in 1921 as an economical automotive paint and was actually responsible for the development of a whole support industry that produced spraying/application machinery, aerosol cans, and the paint production industry .
It offered a cheap way to offer a variety of colors on cars.
http://www.theguitarmagazine.com/features/all-about-nitrocellulose/
So use of NCL on guitars can't predate the '20's.
The highly credible Frank Ford dates its introduction on guitars to between 1925-1930.
http://www.frets.com/FretsPages/Musician/GenMaint/FinishIntro/finishintro.html
Before that French polish, shellac, and other types of varnishes were used as wood and instrument finishes.