Scratch/abrasion Repair On Vintage Finish

[ClevelandJN]

I recently acquired a vintage (70s?) hollowbody, an "Ideal." I believe "Ideal" was a sale brand of Guyatone, but anyway. Here's the problem: on the back of the guitar there are two areas where it appears that someone attempted to rub out smudges and/or scratches using some sort of abrasive material. Thus, they made everything worse by creating lots of light scrathes in circular-ish patterns. Take a step back from the guitar and the two spots just look like to dull spot in need of polishing (which doesn't seem to be enough to fix it).

What I need to know:

1) Should I even try to repair this? I realize that sometimes a person can "repair" an old guitar too much -- sometimes part of a guitar's value is in the "character" that is has accumulated over the years.

2) If so, would fine abrasives be a good way to go? That is, about 6,000-12,000 grit micromesh? It's what many people use to help prepare a guitar's surface for a mirror-like finish. The thing is, on this guitar (as with many old guitars) the finish seems to have conformed to the wood grain to some degree, such that the finish appears to have "grain" as well. It looks like the finish has lots of tiny ridges in it. I'm afraid that if I remove the scratches I will also remove this grain pattern from the top of the finish, thereby creating two spots where the guitar might appear too shiny/mirrorlike/smooth when compared to the surrounding areas, which would still show the wood grain. This still may be prefereable to the scratches, but I thought I'd get y'all's input first.

Here is one of the problem areas -- you can also see the grained appearace of the finish.

http://i938.photobucket.com/albums/ad225/C...um/DSC09336.jpg

The other scratches:

http://i938.photobucket.com/albums/ad225/C...um/DSC09335.jpg

(The cracks are only finish cracks)

Thanks!

CN

Edited April 18, 2010 by ClevelandJN

[wang]

thanks

[Xaromir]

Maybe a little bit of polish will take care of that non then less,

polish basically should be abrasive, a alternative maybe would be toothpaste,

it is abrasive actually, we used to polish our silver with it,

toothpaste for smokers or especially for off-color teeth is quite aggressive,

so be a bit careful at first, it may even become a bit duller, but this maybe can be polished with normal polish,

if it works the way i think it does.

You could try those micromeshs you've mentioned,

i think stewmac got something like that.

But i have to say - i'm also just starting out and i'm not a expert,

but it may be a think you like to try.