Re-polish?

[Mickguard]

I screwed up the polishing on my carvecaster and I'm wondering if this can be fixed.

The clear coat went on fine without any problems, I waited a month before polishing. Wet sanding (to 2000) went fine.

But when I tried to polish it, something went wrong --some parts of the guitar polished up just fine, became nice n' shiny. But other parts stayed (or became?) dull.

So depending on the way the light hits, the guitar either looks great (see the pictures) or looks really bad--streaked all over.

I'm thinking I should be able to sand back the polish a little and rebuff it--will that work?

[Doc]

What did you finish it with?

If you used lacqer you should be okay. The worst you'll have to do is throw another coat at it and wait. I've done this to furniture pieces literally hundreds

of times.

If its polyurethane of any kind you're most likely out of luck. You've cut down through the top coat and are into the bouild coats. Sometimes they'll polish out without the transition showing butusually you will have to scuff sand it out and recoat it. If you have to do this make damn sure you do a really good job of sanding or you'll get adhesion problems.

[Mickguard]

it's acrylic lacquer (automotive rattle can stuff).

the only polish i've been able to find here are sticks --the last time I used them, I didn't have this problem though.

I'm using a buffer wheel attached to a drill. The last time I had the drill spinning too fast and ended up with a few points where I melted the finish a bit.

This time I used a much slower setting --could that be the problem, that it wasn't fast enough?

Think I'll go out and get a real buffer.

But if I sand it back using say, 1000 or 1,500, will I be able to repolish it?

Sure, worse comes to worse, I can respray...but that's another month of waiting and the guitar doesn't look THAT bad...

[erikbojerik]

The rattle-can stuff goes on very thin, so it is possible that the dull parts you're seeing are the build coats. In which case you'd have to re-coat.

Before that though, give it some more buff and see if it improves. If not, scuff & recoat.

If you're using the StewMac pads, I find it much easier to mount the drill in a vise and hold the body with two hands. You get better control over the buff that way.

[Mickguard]

I was afraid of that

The last time around, I'd mounted the drill in a press and moved the body around...this time around I clamped the body....

[Mickguard]

The rattle-can stuff goes on very thin, so it is possible that the dull parts you're seeing are the build coats.  In which case you'd have to re-coat.

←

Took me a few days for me to understand this...I think what happened is I didn't go thick enough on the final coat (didn't understand how important that is). Partly because I was worried about drips.

So yeah, I'll have to add a new final coat.

First, I really need to play this guitar for a couple of weeks....