Well this is a stock Fender American Deluxe strat that was origionally clear coated 2 peice alder body, but I didnt like the color because it looked boring. So I stripped it down with sandpapers (took forever cause the finish is like 1/8 inch thick liquid concrete) and did a 3 tone sunburst on it. I am also working on a warmoth part-o-caster and I dont know what kind of pickup or electronic to put on it (havent decided yet). I ordered an ash body from warmoth I am probably going to clear coat it…
That was a ding I made when I dropped the body by accident. Sometimes you just relic bodies and necks by accident…
I used nothing but cheap hobby airbrush, some alcohol based aniline dyes, clear spray paint from B and Q, (be sure to get the Puff Dino ones, dont get the other cheaper one!) black spray paint for the edge, and lots of time and elbow grease.
I know what it is to have to sand down and respray a guitar by hand, so kudos to you. I bet your hands are a bit tougher than when you started.
You’ve got such a good finish I can’t believe this is your first one. Is it?
I know what it is to have to sand down and respray a guitar by hand, so kudos to you. I bet your hands are a bit tougher than when you started.
You’ve got such a good finish I can’t believe this is your first one. Is it?[/quote]
I used a power sander for that… this isnt my first one though, I had alot of failures due to lack of patience back in America… I used to have this warmoth body with quilted maple top that I messed up on because I didnt know any better… end up selling it and buying a painted body.
So you build that body from a block of wood or was it a pre made body? If you built it from wood where you get the wood from? I cant find ant decent wood anywhere around here except that stuff that looks like mahogany but are crap.
Wouldn’t it be easier to use some sort of a chemical stripper than to manually sand all the finish off?. I’ve never done a guitar but plenty of furniture back in the day.
[quote=“rahimiiii”]
So you build that body from a block of wood or was it a pre made body? If you built it from wood where you get the wood from? I cant find ant decent wood anywhere around here except that stuff that looks like mahogany but are crap.[/quote]
Actually, i built it in Spain. That’s ash (but not Swamp Ash unfortunately. I could only get the rock-hard babeball bat wood. Weighs a tonne). A friend of a friend worked in the industry and was able to source me a slab, all nicely dried out for a year or something. It’s actually two pieces joined together. 1 and a 1/4 inches thick.
If I did it again, I would definitely go about it a different way.
[quote=“canucktyuktuk”]Wouldn’t it be easier to use some sort of a chemical stripper than to manually sand all the finish off?. I’ve never done a guitar but plenty of furniture back in the day.
Good job, by the way.[/quote]
Take a factory guitar, such as a Made in Mexico strat, and put some chemical stripper (ones you can find at B and Q, the enviromental friendly crap) and let it sit on the body for like 10 hours, then try and scrape it off. Wont work because unfortunatly most guitars these days are painted with polyester and cat urethane which is pretty much liquid concrete, nothing will strip it. There is one product called “aircraft stripper” that is supposed to work but I cant find it in Taiwan, and even if I could I wouldnt use it because it’s nasty stuff. and even with that you have to put the thing in a trash bag and let it sit for more than 30 minutes.
Gibsons are much easier to strip because they use nitrocellouse lacquer which can be stripped with lacquer thinner (or “banana water”) and if you could afford a gibson you probably wont want to strip it.
I stripped a Jap tele a few years back and it was easy. The urethane finish was so damn thick I was able to lever great chunks off using a scraper. Opened up the sound amazingly.
What did you use to strip the urethane? my understanding is that most guitars these days, even Fender American Deluxe uses a super thick layer of polyester (thats bondo by the way!!!) then the actual paint is cat urethane. Did you use a heat gun or chemicals? I’d like to know where to get chemicals that works on that sort of things in Taiwan… Im just too scared to ask the shops at tien shui street near taipei station (the chem shops there) because im afraid to be labeled as a terrorist… they got some serious chemicals there!
Reason I wont use a heat gun is because you can actually burn something if you arent careful! At first though I used a disk mounted to a power drill that had a 80 grit paper on it then just went at it. It made huge chunks but I didnt care because some hand sanding took care of the divots made by the disk. Then later I went to B and Q and bought a pad sander they had for about 600 NT and it made short work of the remaining finish without gouging the wood. You can actually feel the difference between the stripped portion and unstripped portion. I dont mean the gloss but I mean you can feel the difference in thickness!When I sanded the side flat the paint around the edge was clearly visable, it was 1/8 inch thick crystal clear paint! I still left the paint in the horns there because it was gonna be covered in the black portion of the burst anyways, and I hate sanding horns! So I just roughed it with a 220 sandpaper and painted right over that. Of course you have to smooth out the corners due to the thick paint…
The reason I stripped it in the first place was because there were a couple of large pieces of the thick polyester that had “flaked off,” so I was able to simply get the edge of a sharp scraper under the poly and simply prise it off. I managed to get almost all of it off in this way. Took less than an afternoon. Did the rest with my Japanese chisels, a rasp and some files. It was a natural finish so there wasn’t any paint to remove. Finished off with a pad sander. Didn’t use any chemicals at all, or any heat, although I had both if I’d needed them.
I’d never use any synthetic stuff on a guitar. It’s the worst thing you can do for the sound.
I’ve stripped so many acoustic guitars of that crap and replaced it with natural oil varnish and the sound is much more open.It works well on solid bodies as well but the trick is making sure you seal the wood first before applying any type of varnish or it will permeate the wood and completely screw up the sound quality forever.
The varnish I like using is the real traditional stuff and it’s well worth the sound quality you get in return.
The last time I stripped a friends solid body I tried this 16th Century Amber Varnish and it totally kicked ass!
Before that I was using the 19th Century Drying Copal Varnish on acoustics and it was also great but don’t know how effective on a solid body. http://www.jamescgroves.com/cgi-bin/thatsanorder_LE
yep, nitro is the best choice, but not many custom guitar shops spray it and it is delicate… Warmoth doesn’t offer nitro finishes and they’re one the best in the biz, but in fairness their poly finishes are excellent, bar tone issues… I’ve thought about ordering an unfinished Warmoth body and attempting to dye / nitro spray it myself, but I don’t think I’d get a burst even close, and does anyone even sell nitro lacquer over the internet?.. I guess a clear gloss would be okay, maybe over a nicely figured one piece swamp ash Strat body, but then again a tobacco burst on spalted maple lam top is gorgeous… damn Warmoth, it’s like guitar porn!..
the biggest problem I reckon with guitar body finishes and even more so, neck finishes is Taiwan’s super humid, in and out of air conditioning environment… you really need to seal the wood otherwise it’s toast, warped, soggy toast…
I just used the “Puff Dino” clear spray paint which is lacquer, not sure if its nitro or acrylic. You cannot order nitro over the internet because its hazardous and cant ship by air. I had moisture problems too but you just spray it on and quickly get it into an air condictioned room and dont spray too heavy coat…
Well, I should have added an IMHO there I’ll admit…
Natually what kind of primer and what kind of finish depends completely on what type of wood you’re finishing, some woods are open grained and super porous and soak up loads of finish, like Spalted Maple… Others are closed grained and are fine with oil only like Korina or Koa…
Nitro is great for woods like Alder and Ash which most Fender bodies are made of because it seals the grain 100% to prevent moisture exchange, but it’s very thin and slightly flexible so it allows for proper vibration and the natural tonal characteristics of the wood… All vintage Fenders used Nitro lacquer up until the 60’s sometime when they discovered Polyeurathane, which is why vintage Fenders have often have finish damage, especially near the pickguard, yellowing and hairline cracking, an unfortunate side effect of Nitro and the reason why Leo Fender changed to thick, hard as a rock Polyeurothane as soon as it was invented by Dupont… Ideally you’d just want to oil a neck to get the advantage of nice smooth raw finish feel (or I would anyway), but on a Maple/Alder/Ash neck oils and some varnishes don’t seal the grain properly which in Taiwan will have necks warping in no time…
In case anyone is interested, this is a great site for info about vintage Fenders and their construction, finishes etc… http://www.provide.net/~cfh/fender.html
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