Just Want To Bounce My Plan Of Attack Off Some Of You...

[blakeish]

For the alder body that I have sanded down to 220 grit, I plan on using Target Coatings, Inc. line of products, since a large thing to take into refinishing consideration, as I've read, is compatibility. So here goes...

1. I plan on using a universal white sealer over the guitar to build the white color coats onto.

2. When the sealing and sanding and etc are taken care of, I am going to use the GOLDEN line of acrylic pigments to build color coats of titanium white to the guitar's body.

3. using the same liquid acrylics, I am going to hand paint, using a brush, the web design where needed on the guitar.

4. for the clear coats I am planning on using the EmTech 9300 water based urethane, to build the finishing coats.

I assume this is an optimal plan, keeping in mind that all products will be ordered from the same company, are industrial/commercial grade products, and are listed as compatible with one another. The acrylic pigments I thought were a nice find since I really don't want to invest a whole lot of money into a summer 'experiment' of sorts, i.e. paying a body shop to paint and finish my guitar for me. I am afriad it's just not in the cards, although I understand an 'automotive poly' finish and paint on job on a guitar would be nothing short of great.

I am also going to search and see perhaps if I could find a good stenciling material to cut and adhere to the guitar to make the application of the black graphics a nice fluid process as well.

thanks so much to those who have contributed their ideas and advice to my earlier posts. peace.

[Drak]

I would recommend you buy a piece of plywood, (a scrap piece of Alder would be even better) cut it the same shape as the guitar (if possible, if not, OK), and proceed to do at least a partial of every step on the plywood before doing it on the guitar.

Say, give the plywood-to-Alder a 3-5 day gap. You perform an operation on the plywood (say, the white sealer coat), then wait 5 days, then if everything looks good, go ahead on the real guitar.

Do a little bit of your web design, not the whole thing, but enough to see if you have your techniques down OK, and if your products are getting along nicely.

5 day gap between plywood and real guitar, don't skip a single step, even if you're not doing say, the entire web design, at least do some of it...that's what I would recommend, for every step of the way, ESPECIALLY on the finishing steps.

[Mattia]

What Drak Said, pretty much.

Run the schedule by the folks at Target, ask them up front whether they see any potential problems (they've got more hours of experience shooting their own products than more or less anyone else), and then do a runthrough on scrap, complete save for buffing, before doing anything to the actual guitar.

I wouldn't put in a 3-5 day break between each step assuming you get a green light from the manufacturers; odds of weird interactions are low compared to mixing and matching prodcuts from different companies.