Foggy

I'm not a luthier by any stretch of the imagination, but from what I've seen of other carved top guitars this looks just a little bit too square around the edges to me (though looking at the piccy again now, that could just be the angle the photograph was atken at?). I've included a link to a picture on Ben Crowes workshop diary that shows what I mean. Ben Crowe This may well not be the kind of carve that your trying to achieve, but if it is it shows the carve pretty well. Jim

Really appreciate all the comments guys, it's the opinions of likeminded and knowledgeable people like yourselves that are the most telling. So thank you. It's funny, but Wesv and Inisheer have said exactly the same about prefering the back to the front as a couple of people here, wifey included! Irony is that the back was only an afterthought, I was literally just experimenting on the back to see if Icould get the background effect for the front looking right, the shark and the wreck just grew from there - so it wasn't really intended at all. I'll be lacquering the body today, then it'll be just the neck to finish off and I can pass the beastie onto Dick, the brains behind the build to get the whole thing together. Have to admit it's getting quite exciting at this stage though - never thought I'd ever get this one done! Jim

Thank you for all the comments on the guitar, they are greatly appreciated. Just finished off the back this evening so it's now almost ready for the first finish lacquer coat tomorrow. Really looking forward to seeing this one finally all put together! Jim

Yes, I'm afraid I am responsible for the paintwork. Taken altogether too long to get to this stage, but nearly finished now, just the back to finish off and the neck and (keep wanting to say 'she'll' be done.......but 'she' doesn't seem to fit with this guitar!), he'll be done! Jim

This is a project that I first started design work on in early 2002 and is now finally getting towards the final finishing stages. Most of my work doesn't take quite this long, honest!, but this one was always intended to be a bit special. The guitar has a mahogany body, it has a maple neck with an ebony fingerboard, custom one off pickups by Aaron Armstrong, fixed bridge with Steinberger tuners and hopefully will sound something as good as I'm hoping it'll look. See what you you guys think - all feedback greatfully received. Jim

If you've got lot's of interest in your guitars and your seriously thinking of going into it fulltime then you're quite right to look at doing your own finishing work - that way you can do the finishes you want to do AND keep the quality level where you want it. There are a couple of issues that really should be pointed out here though as I read similar comments to those quoted above on an all to regular basis. The reason that finishing guitars is expensive is because it is a specialist job (done properly). It is not the same as lacquering 2 pack paint on a car or motorbike, guitar finish needs to be flawless and near enough perfect - that takes time, is very labour intensive and hence is expensive. Also as has been already indicated here, there is a lot of capital outlay involved in kitting up for professional level spray painting and finishing - it's not a case of simply buying a few rattle cans and spraying up in your garage, or on a nice day outside. I should point out here that there is absolutely nothing wrong with using rattle cans, spraying in your garage or outside (I started myself this way), but when you're talking about providing a professional finish for paying customers, it quite soon becomes a different ballgame. Look into setting up a spray booth, buy your compressor, your guns, your paint and go for it........it's the only way you'll appreciate what's involved and maybe then your views will change slightly. Don't take this as a side-swipe at you personally, but I've read and heard comments like these so many times before. Simple fact of the matter is that the finishing on a guitar is usually the most time consuming part of the build - not to mention often the key element in how the finished guitar will look and feel. But all that said, the best of luck with your venture. Jim

Yes it can be done this way to good effect. I've used exactly that technique (though not on a nitro finish) and it came out a really gorgeous finish. Basically all I did was leave the guitar at the stage of being (very thoroughly) rubbed down to 2000 grade wet and dry - and the feel of the guitar was beautiful. The only thing about doing that is that your lacquer coat needs to be near enough perfect for it to be successful. Polishing inevitably hides 'very' small imperfections in the finish, so if the guitar is already polished then taking the shine off it again will mean rubbing down until the satin finish is absolutely perfect - or you'll end up with tiny 'shiney' flaws in your otherwise beautiful satin finish. I was also advised after I'd done this that a very, very fine grade wire wool was another way it could be done, don't know if that would be a better solution? The other thing I did discover finishing this guitar that way, was that over time and lot's of use, the back of the neck naturally polishes itself up again, but still looks and feels good. Jim

I'm not familiar with minwax at all, so I'm not really qualified to offer advice on this. But generally, barring a reaction between the basecoat paint and the finish/lacquer, if the paint was bright white before the finish was applied I'd guess it is definitely the finish you've applied that's given the yellow tint. Unfortunately, that's a really hard one to sort too. If it is the finish the only solution I know is to rub it back, repaint and refinish it again using a different lacquer. Here I'm with killemall8, I think 2k lacquers are hard to beat on solid bodied guitars and use them 95% of the time. But of course that doesn't solve your problem of loosing your applied stencil work. Is the stencil work really detailed, intricate work, or is there any way you could airbrush white in around it without loosing the design and refinish it afterwards? Maybe take the yellow tint back with a white tinted finish coat, but even that would be unlikely to mask an off-white finish and would almost certainly soften the effect of the stencil work below it. Without a picture it's hard to suggest a less painful option, but I do know how frustrating things like this can be, especially if you're working to a deadline. Jim

There is a site that I've come across that does printed vinyl graphics for guitars called 'Fourth floor graphics', not my kind of thing, but they might be able to help you. Jim

Couldn't agree more, it's all about patience and being very, very particular about what your doing. The only other thing I'd add to everything that's already been written in this thread is the importance of a really good light source when your rubbing your clearcoats down, whether it be natural light from a window opposite your work bench, or an adjustable electric light over your work. A good light source will easily show up any shiney indentations or minute hollows in your finish while your rubbing down and helps to achieve that perfect finish. Jim

Out of habit I tend to wet sand the whole of a guitar body so that the whole surface of the guitar is uniform before applying successive coats of lacquer, as I find the lacquer always goes on more smoothly over the whole surface, but, that could easily just be me going over the top. Again, I'd also tend to wet sand to 800 or 1000 grit before applying a second coat of lacquer, but that's not to say that that's 'the' only or necessarily the best way to do it Jim

If you take the original finish back to the wood you can use waterbased Batik (material) dyes. They are cheap to buy (come in powder form so you just add water) and can be mixted to the shade that you require. If I'm tinting bare wood prior to finishing I tend to use these dyes. Obviously the only drawback on a previously finished surfce is that you'd have to get right back to the bare wood before application. Jim

John Just wondering what kind of an effect you'd get applying layers of a 'lightly' white tinted lacquer and building up to the desired shade? Never done that myself, but I'm betting it would create an interesting effect (thinking I might have to try that now), in theory you wouldn't lose the grain that way but you could adjust the colour. Just an idea - but got me thinking now Jim

A good way of creating this kind of finish (particularly if you're already familiar with 2 pack paint systems, ie., basecoat and lacquer coat), is to prep and basecoat your guitar white, seal in your basecoat with a lacquer sealer coat and then once thats dried and lightly rubbed down, apply a second lacquer coat tinted with a small amount of yellow or tan basecoat paint to achieve your required shade. You could just apply this tinted lacquer coat straight over your white basecoat, but if for some reason you weren't happy with the shade you achieved you'd probably have to take it back to step one and start again. Sealing the basecoat in first gives you the chance to rub an unsuccessful tinted lacquer coat back, without re-basecoating white from scratch. I regularly use basecoat paints as tints in lacquer and they work very well, especially if you have transparents. Jim

No problem at all, pleased to be able to help out

Glad you chimed in Foggy. I've been pretty busy lately and haven't had a chance to try anything out, but I wanted to tomorrow. I have a decent Devilbiss touchup gun with a 1.0 nozzel ... is this cool to use? Should I reduce the psi at my compressor from 80 to 50? And try to reduce the psi at my gun as well (currently 20psi)? And what type of fan spread do you look for and how far away to you hold the gun from the body? (bare in mind I'll be using a smaller touchup gun) I've gpt a body ready for clear but I'm really, really paranoid about shooting the clear. I've ruined so many really nice paintjobs and wasted so much time ... I really hope this works.

Just read through this thread so coming into this late in the day, but I think DGW maybe has your solution here. I suffered the same problems that you're having now when I first started shooting lacquers and I completely understand your frustration. Like yourself I went through EVERYTHING to try and get rid of the problem and was actually becoming completely paranoid about shooting lacquer coats at all. Not going to go over everything that's already been said here, but I always use a 1mm nozzle for shooting laqcuers on guitars, at 50psi pressure from the (second) moisture trap in my booth and adjusted further on the gun itself as I spray. I shoot one very, very, light dust coat of lacquer to mist the surface of the guitar, leave it for two or three minutes, then shoot a slightly heavier, but still very light coat over the guitar again. This is then left for roughly ten minutes and then shoot another slightly heavier coat (I have shot up to five light lacquer coats with a ten to twenty minute stand between each coat this way with great results). With the Octoral lacquers I use I've never had a problem, in fact I've never had a problem with various brands of lacquer I used over the years using this method. I don't use any solvent to thin the lacquer, just shoot it as it's mixed and it works perfectly. Just ensure you never have your lacquer 'swimming' on the surface and use the minimal pressure at the gun you can to get the necessary atomisation (too much pressure is not good). I tried umpteen different methods of applying lacquer prior to this one, with different mixes of solvents at different pressures, different temperatures and different nozzle sizes, but this is the one that worked for me. Hope this is some use to you.

Try some 'Turtle wax' on it, after cutting back to a shine with cutting compound I always use six or seven applications of Turtle wax on my guitars, as it gives a really hard deep shine to the finish. Worth a try if you're stuck sourcing your normal polish. Jim

As Dickie_rayne says you can get it off of ebay, I bought the last lot I had from there albeit some time ago now. Another option if you can't track any down though, would be to try 'T cut'. I tend to use 'T cut' as my regular finishing compound these days after any minor flaws in the final lacquer coat are knocked back with 2000 wet and dry, works a treat Jim

Yes, to be honest, the work that I take on is almost always on solid bodied guitars these days and so I tend to work pretty much exclusively with 2k lacquers - I just like the finish they give. My experience of the many different finishes that are available today is by comparison with many of the people on this forum, severely limited . So I suspect as syxxxstring rightly points out there will almost definitely be finishes out there that really just 'don't like it hot'! I actually think that the amount of different types of finish available today, whilst good news in one sense, is also one of the reasons many people are wary of taking on the finishing of their own guitars. It's almost as if there's so many potential options out there, that for the first timer it must be an absolute nightmare trying to decide which route to go down. That's where forums like this one come into their own - at least here there's somewhere we can all go and pick each others brains when things don't quite work out as we'd intended Jim

i haven't seen it on wood but i have seen it on metal and it ain't pretty when those solvents finaly decide its time to come out. The main reason that solvents get trapped is usually that the finish is just applied too thickly. Whether baked or normally air dried, if almost any finish is laid on too thickly, or recoated too soon, the solvents in the outer surface will evaporate out to air and form a skin before the solvents in the finish below has had a chance to disperse. This is when you can get microscopic bubbles in your finish or even 'fisheyes' as the solvent below tries to escape through the outer surface. Light coats and adherence to the manufacturers instructions (for whatever finish you're using) is more often than not the key to a good finish.

I wish WezV!! Mind you, I have to admit it is glorious up here today . I do sometimes miss the weather 'south' though as I am originally from the midlands too (Leicester), but that said, the better weather is about the only thing I miss - apart from the almost constant wind, it's pretty good up here. It's actually perfect weather up here today for curing a lacquer coat outside and isn't that just typical, I'm not at that stage today!

Interesting topic this one...............and thanks for the mention Kelow. As WesV rightly says excessive heat on a guitar body (and particularly a guitar neck) is never a good idea in my opinion and should be avoided, but baking a finish in a consistent moderately warm well ventilated envoironment definitely does help to cure lacquer off. When I first started I was painting and lacquering in my old stone built garage with very limited fascilities (not ideal here in Orkney where there is an almost constant gale blowing), so keeping work free of dust particularly while lacquering was a nightmare despite all my best efforts at sealing the building. At that time I made up a kind of 'oven' out of two old fridges connected together, this was warmed via light bulbs and a dimmer switch and I used an industrial vacuum cleaner (set to blow) to blow air through a filter into the oven with an exhaust filter at the other end. Basically a very crude positive pressure system that gave me at maximum about 40 degrees of temperature - warm, but not roasting hot. This served to keep the dust off of the lacquered guitars (that were hastily set into it after lacquering on purpose made carriers - very, very basic setup) and helped the lacquer set off more quickly. It actually worked quite well once you got into the swing of doing it - but it wasn't ideal. These days with the spraybooth I have now those problems don't arrise, but I still would never over heat a finished guitar body or neck. If you're fortunate enough to live in a nice warm climate, the very best thing for curing (certainly 2k lacquers) is sunlight - once your lacquer is touch dry if it's a nice day outside hang it (securely of course) outside in the sunlight - this really speeds up the curing process. Do make sure it's touch dry though or all you'll do is create a very expensive fly trap! Along the same lines, I've an old sunbed that I've set up to hang lacquered guitars in front of (not in the spraybooth!!), as the UV - not always readily available naturally here - reduces the cure times between multiple rubbing down , masking and lacquering stages.

Never tried the plasticote paints so I really don't know how they would work for you/ranges of colours available/etc.. One of the biggest drawback of using aerosole paints is that you obviously can't mix your own colours for spraying - along with the obvious drawback that you are limited in your control of the paint when you're applying it from an aerosole. One thing I should have mentioned with regards to the car paints (cellulose) is that you have to be very aware of the fumes...........no doubt you would always wear a mask when spraying any paints anyway - but cellulose fumes are particularly unpleasant on the old lungs - so if you did go down that road make sure you have plenty of ventilation and a good fume mask . By the sounds of it your guitars present finish is pretty ropey . If there are little silica spots/bubbles/dimples/pinholes in the finish on the guitar it may be that you are better to go with your original plan and just strip back to the wood and start from scratch (try an electric paint stripping heatlamp for removing the original paint). Then seal the wood, prime and go from there. A good source for most of the materials you may find you need is ebay - I get most of my masking films, airbrushes and sundrie kit via ebay these days - if you wanted to try cellulose paints most Halfords stock a fair range. Other than that good luck with your project ....................be warned though................once you start painting guitars you risk becoming a guitar painting junkie - and then there's simply no going back! Jim