Hey Ya'll,
Ok, ok...I know it's not a Fender but...

I picked up a Johnson acoustic a while back with a busted headstock for real cheap. I figured for the price I payed, it would make an interesting project...if nothing else, give me something to do with my hands while I'm giving up the cigs. As you'll see in the pics, I do have the headstock reattached. There was some missing wood there so I also have it putty'd up with my own special mix (DAP wood putty mixed with Titebond...hasn't failed me yet). I have most of the sanding done and am almost ready to start shooting the paint...which leads me to my question.

Since this is a rather cheap instrument to begin with and I'm just doing this for fun more than anything else, I'm not refinishing the whole guitar here...this is just a repair. As such, I need to try and match the paint to the existing color of the headstock & neck. I'm not sure if you can really see it in the pics but it's not actually black...it's a really dark brown (again, think "cheap acoustic"). For this one I'm just planning on using enamel as it's inexpensive but I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts or suggestions on mixing the color here?


Here's where I am so far...



This is a picture of the headstock the day I brought it home...yes, I just put the damn thing on my flatbed scanner! LOL!!! Unfortunately I had a brain fart and didn't bother to get a picture of the neck or anything before I started working on it.




Here's a shot of the whole guitar now with the headstock reattached.




And of course a close up...





Now before anyone says anything....YES I'm going to wipe it down with naptha before I start painting! LOL!!! I know there's a lot of sanding dust there. Also, yes I filled the screw holes for the tuners...I'm replacing the cheap covered tuners with something a little more conventional so as long as I'm repainting the headstock anyways, figured I'd get rid of the extra holes while I was at it. I haven't really decided whether or not I'm going to replace the logo or not...I'll probably decide that once I have the color coats shot...I'm not sure it's really worth the effort for this particular instrument.

Anyways, I'm hoping to start shooting the new paint on Thursday. I think for the sake of ease and convenience I'm probably going to use Tester's "model paint" as I don't have to buy a ton of the crap and it works well in my air brush. I'm thinking that I can pick up a bottle of brown and a bottle of black and just keep adding black to the brown until it's the right shade...thoughts/comments on this? Does this sound like it has any chance of working at all? My biggest concern is blending the new finish into the old...I've never done this kind of work before (not even on cars) so I'm kind of breaking new ground here...which is why I'm doing this on a really cheap guitar. That whole learning experience thing .

As always, I'm grateful for any thoughts or opinions here!

Peace,
Jim

if you're going to paint the bare wood, you'll have to prime it first, otherwise the paint will just soak into the wood leaving you with a lousy finish. you can get a quick-drying spray bomb primer at the hardware store. just a thin coat to seal the wood.
if it's a really dark brown, start with bright red. add just a tiny bit of bright yellow until it looks like a tomato. ever-so-carefully start adding drops of black and stir it in. once you get in the ball-park, you can adjust the hue with red or yellow.
the only forseeable trouble is with the gold logo. if you try to mask it, you'll wind up with a line in the finish. if you're good with the airbrush you should be able to avoid it though. then spray a clear coat over it.
you'll need to be careful with the clear coat because there are a lot of different ones out there. make sure whatever you get is compatible with what's on the guitar, or you might wind up with a headstock that looks like a prune.

hope this helps.

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Hi Lomitus: hard to be certain from the pix, but I suspect the dark brown of the finish is semi-transparent, so part of the color you see is the lighter brown of the wood showing through from beneath. Obviously, you'll never achieve that over your repair - unless you are a fan of the camoflage look...

To get anywhere near it you'd need to first spray the entire headstock with an opaque pale brown color that is as close as you can get it to that of the bare wood. Then spray heavily tinted clear lacquer over the top of that. Several coats till the required darkness is achieved.

Is it worth it? Only you can decide.

BTW: Forum user john.bohn may have some photography tips for you...

Cheers - C

I think Jim could get close to the colour by mixing the model paint. I am not sure if the enamel will match the current finish, as far as gloss and feel and such. But you have the right idea as per mixing the colours. I would go opaque on the headstock, unless you want to perfectly match the colour of the wood filler to the bare wood, and paint in grain lines. (this can actually be done, but it takes a ton of work, and probably isn't worth it on a cheap guitar, unless you want to learn how to do it. If you do be prepared to finish and refinish and refinish a lot of times until you are happy.)

I personally would make a test board, mix the colours in a seperate container, start off really light brown, and add more black until you get the right "Van Dyke" brown (fancy way of saying brown with black mixed in.)--you might need to amber it up a bit with yellow and red, to get the right overtones,it is hard to say if you will be able to find a brown that will shade to the tone you want with just adding black-- I usually measure each component in drops, and keep track, that way you end up with a pretty reliable ratio, when it comes to mixing a larger black. Start with 10 drops of brown, and then 1 drop of black. do a sample paint on another board, and compare, add another drop of black and do another test, so on. if you end up with the right colour at 10 drops of brown and say 5 drops of black, then you know you need 2 to one for your final mix. Mixing the paint will be the only part of this different than the finishing you have already done.

As for the logo, you have a couple options. You could print a new vinyl waterslide decal on a good inkjet, or you could try replicate it by painting it with a metallic paint. I would most likely make a stencil and paint it with some gold testors model paint, as you are already using that for your colours.

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I'm not an expert, but I play one on the internet.

Well, well. There's more to you than meets the eye, Mr Twelvebar...

Cheers - C

Hey Ya'll,
Thank you everyone for the comments...I'm grateful. The actual finish on the headstock and neck is not semi-transparent...it's a dark opaque brown. I'm thinking it's some sort of universal color for cheap acoustics as my wife's Harmony and my Tetoma both have that same color brown painted on the neck. Interestingly enough, this neck (or the headstock at least) actually appears to be mahogany. I haven't looked up any specs on this acoustic yet (if they even exist) but from the looks of the wood...kind of surprised me that they would have used mahogany on such a cheap instrument.

Either way, the biggest concern is really matching the color...a scrap piece of wood sounds like a novel idea. This particular project doesn't have to be "perfect" by any means...I just want it fairly close. Another reason I'm using the enamel is that I have no idea what type of finish is actually on this thing...my first guess would be some kind of poly but honestly, it sanded off pretty easily so that could easily be wrong. Either way, enamel usually goes well over most other finishes (as long as they are well set and dry) so I shouldn't have too many issues as far as paint compatibility goes.

BTW....I'm not terribly worried about the headstock logo here. -If- I decide to do it, I will have to do it similar to what I just did on the Yamaha bass I'm working on. Since my inkjet doesn't print "gold" and even the yellow doesn't come out opaque enough to be useful on a dark color, if I decide to do a new logo what I will do there is use my transfer kit again, print the inverse of the logo in the dark brown on the transfer paper then air brush in the gold lettering. Again I just haven't decided if I want to go to that kind of effort or not yet for this particular guitar.

It's not a great picture, but here's a shot of the bass I'm also working on right now (I pieced her together a couple of days ago between clear coats) with the new Yamaha body logo done the way I just described...





As with the gold, my inkjet doesn't do "white" either. It took me a few days and lots of trial and error to figure out a way around this. The first thing I tried was doing a yellow decal on waterslide paper but again even with 5 passes thru the printer, it just wasn't opaque enough to be seen when applied over a black finish such as this. I tried a few other things to without success before I went up to my local craft store in a fit of frustration and started asking some questions. The lady there came up with the idea of the transfer kit but again the yellow just wouldn't get thick enough to be opaque and that's when I came up with the idea of printing it "inverse"...since it's a transfer decal, all lettering has to be printed backwards anyway so by printing the "outline" of the lettering in the (more or less) same color as the body, I was able to go back with the air brush and paint in the lettering itself so that once it's applied, only the lettering really stands out. Not a perfect solution, but it actually works pretty well all things considered.

Incidentally, the bass still needs another couple of coats of clear (another another pass at wet sanding or two) then I'm going to have to let her sit for -at least- a month...I went really heavy on the lacquer on this one so it's going to take a while to dry. I'm still trying to find new pickup covers for her anyways (the originals were badly melted during a fire) otherwise I'm going to have to come up with some way of repairing these. In other words, it's going to be a while before this one is ready....another reason for working on this cheap acoustic.

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Frankie...good tip on the primer. I hadn't thought of that. On most of my refinishes (at least recently) I'm usually doing a full refinish and it's usually some type of burst so I just use sanding sealer and that tends to work well in lieu of the primer. Since this is a dark brown, the red primer might not be a bad idea.


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Alrighty, again my thanks to all. A couple of good ideas there for me to chew on. As I said earlier, I'm going to try and get this sucker shot tomorrow so I'll let ya'll know how she comes out.

Peace,
Jim