Sand Paper

Professional grade lacquer dries pretty darn hard. A lot of people on here use two part finishes and that is really the best way to do it. However, a nice professional grade one part nitrocellulose lacquer is a perfectly fine guitar finish IMO. We use the PPG Speedline series at work on furniture, and it takes a pretty good beating. Our methylene chloride (dichloromethane) based stripper takes a long time to remove it compared to say old varnishes, shellac, or oil finishes. Anything that stands up to the stripper like that gets good marks in my book.

Mount a bottle opener on it!

I'd go with a cheap HVLP system or just a low priced HVLP gun run off of a compressor. HVLP turbines provide you with air on demand, as soon as you turn it on, you're spraying and you never run out of air. The downside to HVLP turbines is that professional ones are EXPENSIVE, get hot, are louder than all out, and from my experience can be unreliable. We used professional grade turbines at work for years, but when they die, you're SOL and their repair costs are high. So a cheap little HVLP combo that does the job for maybe $200 isn't such a bad deal (Woodcraft has one for $69!). Compressors are nice because they're cheaper, and repair and maintenance is cheaper and easier. The downside to a compressor is that you run out of air sooner or later. You may also have to buy an adapter/regulator for your HVLP gun. Accuspray makes one, it's $50 and the quality is iffy (leaky). We switched to a compressor about a year and a half ago when our third turbine died. It's a 25gal Craftsman compressor, we bought a condensing unit for it to keep the lines clear of water and said HVLP adapter. The drawback to this is that the compressor is a bit small, and compressed air flows differently than a turbine. We have to set the tanks regulator to about 40PSI to keep the airflow up, and then dial it down at the gun to 10PSI to keep it HVLP and to not waste the air or damage the gun. I hope that gives you a little insight into the options available for HVLP.

I think your best bet would be to buy the compatible flake materials and then have a shop do the spray, even on just that one or two coats. Also, airbrushes are pretty cheap, and paintwithpearl.com says their flakes are able to be sprayed with an airbrush.

I Have a J factory S from 1995. I find the neck is too thin to play like I normally would. The guitar is however, as stated, a dream to play in a live situation or just standing up. I never really considered copying it until this thread, weird. I'll have to put that on a to-do list for whenever I actually start building stuff. FWIW I wish it had a Kahler and not the Floyd Rose, I no longer like the feel of the Floyd since I bought a Kahler.

I bought some wood like 3 years ago. I have since been reading and reading, and i did a drawing, that's about as far as it's gone. So sad...

Sorry about the sort of run together nonsense in the first post. In response to Prostheta: It's not that I want to modify a guitar I own but perhaps for a new build. As for what I own and play now, it's sort of a mash up. I have an LTD Explorer and a Washburn Dimebag (low quality) signature both with tune-o-matics, an Ibanez S with a floyd low-pro in it, and the LTD KH-202 that I modified for the Kahler, as well as my first guitar which has a Fender style bridge. I do not like the feel of floyds that much in comparison with the tune-o-matic. The Kahler to me feels like a mix between the two and I love it. I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel here or anything but maybe an asymmetrical radius would work, however that's maybe a bit more work than I would want to tackle. A friend of mine was raving about compound radius' and I can see how that would have an advantage as well. I could sort of set the action higher and perhaps compensate the lower strings using the nut so it has a lower action around the first couple frets. That's just a guess and is probably wrong, but a thought none the less. Then again, if Metal Matt did the flat fretboard thing and likes it, it might be worth investigating.

So i got to thinking about the way I set up my guitars. When I was younger and would send my guitars out to the shop to be set up and stuff and the guitars would come back with perfect action. However the last time this happened was when I needed a fret level and recrown and even though the guitar came back perfect i felt that it played all wrong. I play metal and I pick like a beast, fast and with force. Perhaps it's not the most refined technique ever but it works for me. With a normal low action, the lower strings just slap the frets during speed picking and palm muting and aren't very musical at all. So I sort of set the high strings where they should be and then raise the low end to what would be considered a high action. This past year I fitted a Kahler 2300 to one of my guitars and set the radius by feel of each string and what I thought it should feel like being played and how it sounded. I noticed that this "radius" is more or less like a slope rather than a curve. So what would it be like if I just took out the radius and made a flat fretboard where I could just apply the slope? Would this really change the feel of the guitar all that much since I set the actions all funky any way? Maybe a partial radius from say the fourth string to the first string where it's like a rounded slope on those strings or maybe the other way around to add action to the lower ones? I mean I play fine with radiused boards but why even bother if I don't really use them like normal players? Advice, discussion and info much appreciated.

While we don't put out nearly that quantity of work where i work, PGG could probably supply you. PPG offers the same basic products everyone else does though. Any major paint manufacturer should have a professional supply division for people in the industry that need quantity. If you're shooting nitro, Flo-Strip/Chemisphere has 55 and 30 gallon drums of both finish grade and cleanup grade lacquer thinner available for reasonable prices. Flo-Strip is an awesome company to work with.

The plastic and shower curtains might have a problem. Believe it or not a good box fan flows enough cfm to produce a pretty decent vacuum in a small space. You could always just anchor the shower curtains somehow with velcro but they might still puff inwards toward the window. Like stated above, get a furnace filter that's the size of the box fan, this will help a ton with keeping the fan and window clean. Another thing you could consider is to construct a spray hood out of cardboard boxes or plywood. Really the only place overspray goes is in the direction that you're spraying. The hood sort of funnels everything to the fan, and then outside. Then you could have a little mobile spray hood to use wherever there's a window, or even outside.

All the blushing/hazing I've encountered comes usually right after the finish flashes over with it's film. Sometimes it's there as soon as the lacquer hits the wood. The original post sort of suggests that you noticed it later on in the process which to me is odd. What that looks like to me is what happens when you spray the water based Minwax Polycrylic and it's drying. You can always give it some time and see if it evaporates out or you can scuff back a little and that might take care of it like others have said. I have no experience with blush removers so i can't comment on that area. If it's deep in the finish then this is weird to me because it should have been present from the start.

When stripping a thicker material it's usually best to start with heat. That will remove multiple layers at once usually down to bare or almost bare wood. After that you can use stripper to remove any left over finish that was hard to get off or didn't come off entirely with heat, as well as stains or dyes for the most part. After that you should wash the guitar off using whatever the strippers directions suggest as a cleanup, usually a solvent soaked rag.

PPG, Sherwin-Williams, Stew-Mac, Rockler, etc. They probably even have it at wally world by now.

If you're going to use the Minwax Polycrylic, their site says it's compatible over latex and oil based paints. It also states that some "ambering" may occur. In my experience the polycrylic flashes over with a blue haze and then comes pretty darn clear. I've only used the satin and really it was lacking in that grain color "pop" that you get from say nitro. I'm not sure if this is true for the other sheens or how it would affect your stenciling. In terms of selecting another product look for phrases like "Crystal Clear," or "Water White," (it's not white). No matter what i bought I'd do test samples on scraps first, you don't want to use a solvent based finish and crackle up the whole guitar.

ORANGE TINY TERROR!!!!! This thing rules, it's 7 or 15 watts selectable. Does the full blown melt faces gain thing great. It's kind of expensive for what it is though.

My brother is the drummer in our band, we're all poor. The Amps needs tubes, I have 1 pack of strings and 5 guitars. The other guitarists amp needs major repairs. All the cymbals are broken except for the hi-hats and ride. Drum heads are totaly beaten to beyond crap. Bass player is playing on a Rogue bass for crying out loud, yes, ROGUE. Every show we go out there and smash faces. We have a ton of fun, and people realize it, and they have fun too. We've totally messed up songs live before, pretty much to where we had to stop and figgure out what was going on. At 12am or 1am the crowd is drunk, grumpy and wants to hear some tunes, so you go at it. Every practice we play the set over and over, write some, drink some beer, and have fun. When you can't have fun anymore you need to either take a break or quit. I'd be hard pressed to find people in this city that could do what my band mates do. You told him he needs new stuff, and he's probably trying. Musicians always want the best stuff, no one wants to play on cymbals that sound like aluminum roofing or heads that sound like a rubermaid tub. Settling for that is counter productive, even if the stuff he has now is broken. I'd stick with the guy unless he becomes just totally inept at playing. When he gets the new stuff he'll be all excited again and just want to play the kit all the time and it'll be even more fun then. Plus he now has Xbox 360, so i'd recomend you go take full advantage of that. Not sure if i even made a point here, but music is fun, always have fun.

I'm in Columbus Ohio. I could do it at work but from previous experiences and seeing as how we don't do guitars every day, you'd be paying about $500, maybe more depending on what you want. It might take a month or more as well, we're backed up.

Okay so i still dont have pictures, but that's alright, most people here would find this work to be utter crap anyhow. Lots of sanding was done today to make the fills flush. There's still finish on the guitar and it needs a repaint. Rather than strip the guitar i'm going to do a "blend" with automotive paint. This may or may not ruin whatever is left on the guitar, but that's pretty much the raw deal with any material i would use. Routing and painting will be completed tomorrow (today actually). The whole guitar will be asembled and set up saturday just in time for my show (hopefully). Now if only i could changed the model number inlay to say "Slaytallica" i would be set... haha.

So in lieu of building the guitar i have been planning, i thought i'd convert a guitar with a Floyd Rose, to a Kahler trem. Except without using the plate, and to make it look like it always had the Kahler to begin with. The guitar is an LTD KH-202 and it came with probably the worst licensed trem ever made. The replacement for said crap-fest is an 80's Kahler 2300. What i have accomplished so far is as follows: - Removal of all hardware and electronics from the body, neck has been removed from the body. - Chiseled out the raised portion of the top floyd rout where the studs screw in. - Sanded the paint/finish off of the routs to reveal bare wood, this was not done to perfection, but they were clean. - Cut filler blanks out of mahogany and put them in place using System 3 Epoxy, the epoxy was used to fill any and all gaps. The difficulty of this project is that i'm shooting to have it done by Saturday, however i won't rush things for the sake of a time frame, it just means working harder and longer. If all goes to plan this should come out looking like a gold brick. I will take pictures and post them ASAP. I didn't think of taking pics from the start, i was too anxious to to get going on the project.

Guitar @ 10 Distortion channel max gain, max volume, with high input (boost) selected. Clean channel at 5 volume/gain Master 1 set to 3 Master 2 set to 3.75 for solo boosting. Clean channel gives a nice slight crunch, distortion sounds raw and open. Master 2 brings up the mids even with that little volume increase. Amp is a 100 watt running at 50w with hot bias for power tube goodness.

I suspect you could just use a black grain filler like CA or System 3 or something since those will reject stain/dye. Regular paste type fillers might take on a little of the red, even though black is black is black and you cant go any lighter, I still wouldn't want to see weird effects.

For the crate guy... My rythem player uses a Crate Blue Voodoo 120 from the early 90's with matching V30 loaded cab. Very thick saturated sounds with big bottom end. Clean channel is good, reverb is okay at best. It's obvious this amp uses mosfets in the preamp due to making massive distortion using 4 preamp tubes. The amp is noisy due to degraded filter caps and the power switch is messing up, other than that, it's golden. For the thread... I use a Hughes & Kettner Duotone 100w head that i pulled two tubes in to get 50w. Runs through a H&K Alex Lifeson signature V30 loaded 4x12.

Pittsburgh Pains/PPG makes Direct to Metal (DTM) and Direct to Rust (DTR) industrial coatings, they come in high gloss. You can get them in most colors.

I saw those and quite frankly they look too goofy and messed up.

While sketching a headstock design I forgot to draw the tuning knobs in the sketch, so I added them and it looks fugly. The obvious solution is Firebird tuners, but there seems to be only one kind available online and it doesn't say who makes them. Here's the link: http://www.iwantguitars.com/store/?product=9751 . Has anyone used these before? Are they utter crap or what? They're going on a guitar with a locking trem so they don't have to be the most prescise fine example of a tuner. Then again I don't need a freaking pot-metal tuner breaking or anything either, because that would just suck (price). What do you guys think, should I buy them or find another solution?