Tie-dye Strat Copy Refinish

[element17]

Hey all!

This is my first post so I thought I'd share the results or my first project with you. My guitar is a Yamaha EG-112 Fat Strat Copy, and I had it for about a year before I decided that the standard black body with white pickguard was getting boring.

I stripped it in hopes that I would soon get lacquer cheap from my uncle who owns a body shop, but it sat stripped and fully disassembled for about 5 months. (During that time, I was supposed to have seen him, but plans got changed.) This led me to browse the internet looking for cool ways to refinish without painting, because I thought I might be able to do something more creative than a solid color refinish. I came across a great wealth of knowledge here at www.ProjectGuitar.com and found the material finishing tutorial . I decided to go for that one, because of it's ease and flexibility. I browsed fabrics on eBay for a couple of days, and eventually decided to tie-dye the guitar.

I went to Wal Mart and got the fabric for $1.44 US and the tie-dye kit for about 8 dollars. I bought the fabric sealer for about 5, and polyurethane for 9. I used a quart of Minwax Fast-drying High Gloss oil-based Polyurethane, and ended up only needing about a pint. I had the HVLP gun to spray with and the Titebond wood glue.

I ended up spraying 6 coats of polyurethane sanding in between coats. The finish looks wet. All the hardware/pickguard are the original, but I painted the backplate/jackplate and pickguard with Rustoleum Hammered metal finish gold paint.

I applied 2 coats of polyurethane to them with a paper towel, and they came out great.

The project took about a 2 months because I was busy, but work time was as follows:

Strip body with sandpaper and random orbit sander - 30 minutes.

Shop for supplies - 30 minutes.

Dye fabric, wait for it to cure, iron. - 18 hours

Apply fabric with glue - 20 minutes

Let dry - 2 hours

Seal fabric with Mod-Podge - 10 minutes, dry for 4 hr.

Cut off excess fabric - 10 mins.

Level sides with wood filler - 10 minutes

Spray paint blue sunburst - 30 minutes, 2 coats.

Spray 6 coats of polyurethane, sanding in between - 25 days.

Cure - 14 days

Paint and polyurethane plates/pickguard - 45 minutes

Cure/dry - 6 days.

Solder/Reassemble Guitar - 2 hours.

It was a great learning experience and here are the before and after pictures.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

It still plays great, and the tone is very bluesy with the switch set to the humbucker.

You can not feel the fabric texture at all, but you can see the weaving of it, so it plays with your senses a little bit.

Sorry I was so long winded, but I hope I was able to help anyone learn anything about refinishing with material.

I'm all ears (eyes?) for any input, positive or negative.

Edited April 15, 2007 by element17

[pmarlin]

That definitely looks better than plain black and white good job.