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This is my first with nitro, so I'm unfamiliar with some of the properties...

Drilling the tuners holes, there was some slight delaying of the finish at the very edge, which is to be expected I think.

However, I had expected nitro to be a more flexible film like texture, whereas the chips are breaking into tiny crystals, like I expect from UV cure poly.

Is that normal?

One option is to pre-drill the holes and clear them after finishing with reamers...much less lift on free edges. Well dried lacquer is definitely more brittle than something like Enduro-Var, that has to really be mishandled to separate.

_________________
A constellation only takes shape when one maps the whole.
- Beth Brower

Yep.

_________________
Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

Great, thanks, that eases my mind considerably.

I saw this on the guild instagram the other day...https://www.instagram.com/p/BJ2-MfbjEvr ... tars&hl=en

Looks like a good solution to me.

Ohh, sorry, I read your post too quickly...I've always pre-drilled.

I've always found it easier to buff the headstock without holes. The holes have a tendency to catch the compound leaving an unpolished but underneath, or to burn through.

"The holes have a tendency to catch the compound leaving an unpolished but underneath, or to burn through."

Slightly chamfering the holes may help the lacquer "wrap around" a bit and reduce that tendency.

Excellent idea.

The brittleness of nitro is believed to be part of why it lets the treble of the guitar sing through. Part of the beauty of old traditional guitars is the look of the little chips. Some nitro comes with more plasticizers mixed in, which makes it softer and tougher. This is a reason to stick with one brand of finish as you learn how to deal with it.
I add a drop of castor oil to an ounce of mixed nitro for a tough model airplane finish, I suppose you could use that for a certain part of a guitar where you were worried about chipping.
One of the best things about nitro is that you can invisibly fix just about anything that goes wrong as you are learning how to use it.