Epitree Posted December 2, 2015 Share Posted December 2, 2015 Hello friends. Though the guitar that I refurbished is not a gibson, I still thought I should share this information with all. I recently purchased a beat to hell American Strat. Since it was in such bad shape, i made it a project to try and paint it an old 50's color and a David Gilmour type relic. So I am making this thread to share some knowledge on problems I ran into and hopefully save someone a headache. The first problem I encountered was a problem with streaks. When I would paint I would go up and down with my primer and paint in a horizontal fashion. When it dried it was very noticeable. I solved this with a piece of sandpaper (high grit). When I would paint horizontal and the lines would show up I would take the sandpaper and VERY lightly sand the streaks where paint had risen. Not completely but just enough for there to be no super rough edges. Now when I went to paint again i went vertical, then sanded once dried. The paint I used dried in about three hours, so when it was time to paint, time to sand. When I was doing my painting/ drying I used a coat hanger and ran it through the neck mount holes and fastened them to my garage door rail. If you do this you can go 360 and get an even, light coat. But with this came another problem. When I went to Seal it, (I used regular clear satin Polyurethane spray) with it being hung like it was when I would seal, the sealant is so light that it would run down and create large globs at the base of the guitar. After man trials I figured out when you spray you poly, have a hairdryer close by and have cold air blowing on it as soon as you finish your coat. Doing this your poly will be nice and smooth. Now when it came to the relic side of things I had no prior knowledge on how to do this. I read some forums about it and everything was more along the lines of i took a screw driver to it. So after testing a few things out i figured out that if you wait maybe 5 minutes after you put a coat of paint on, grab a basic eraser and gently rub the paint off to your desire. Since I wanted a gilmour style relic, every coat i would rub quite hard until you could faintly see the color underneath. With Gilmour's Black strat a good bit of the under coat is showing from use. i think I got quite close to what I wanted to achieve. One last tip. Please make sure that you use painters tape on the neck pocket. It is a real pain to have to sand that out to get your neck in. Hope someone finds a use for this. Listen to Black Metal. Pictures Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
btoth76 Posted December 2, 2015 Share Posted December 2, 2015 Hello and welcome to the Forums. Yes, finishing a guitar (or anything else) isn't just about spraying on the paint. Preparing the surface is what takes most of the time. It is a profession on it's own, with sophisticated processes. Good luck... Bence Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Epitree Posted December 2, 2015 Author Share Posted December 2, 2015 Hello and welcome to the Forums. Yes, finishing a guitar (or anything else) isn't just about spraying on the paint. Preparing the surface is what takes most of the time. It is a profession on it's own, with sophisticated processes. Good luck... Bence Like I mentioned in my post, I was going for the Gilmour relic. I sanded the body and primed before painting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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