so friday i took the plunge and decided to refinish my squire. Its had years of abuse and aside from some resonance issues (i put down to the polyurethane finish) plays as well as any £1k guitar. Although this could just be that i've had it so long now my hands have grown to fit it. anyway heres some pics.

before

after the initial strip


surprisingly enough for a £200 guitar its got a 1 piece basswood body.

and after the first coat of primer which i use as a miss-coat, to show up any imperfections in the sanding, i.e highs and hollows


and the special tool i use to get the impefections out

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Looks like you had a productive week-end,also had some help huh?

yeah them little hands are great for the difficult areas.

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Awesome...
Are you pretty good at playing that thing too?

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Hello Nikininja,

Nice job your doing there.

Did you use a chemical paint remover?
and or heat?

Besty of luck with your project.

Cheers.

i used a mixture of chemical remover and sanding. The chem was used in the difficult upper and lower horns to remove alot of the polyester and layers of paint. then the final layers were taken off with hand sanding. trust me it had alot. The weight of the body painted was 1887gramms 4.1 ilbs now stripped its 1690 gramms 3.7 ilbs. I considered using heat and decided against it, the idea of a blowtorch on my guitar just seems very wrong to me I used the nitromors sparingly because i didnt want it coming into direct contact with the wood.

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not as good as i'd like to be.

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Note the routing....generic.....a cost saving factor for a variety of models. Fender does this as a matter of course.

Keep that in mind if you ever order a Custom Shop guitar...that you want it routed for the pickups/or the vintage you are designing and not to the purposes suited the company.

It is tone wood one is trying to preserve.

Doc

2 more pics

1 sanding after the miss-coat of primer


2 final primer coat flattend and slightly polished waiting for the paint to be delivered


painting starts wednesday/thursday

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Looks good so far! Keep us posted.

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Brilliant! First time I've ever heard the thickness of a polyester lacquer expressed by weight. And what a difference it was! Amazing.

I shall be weighing bodies before and after from this moment on...

On the routing thing: yes, generic indeed. My most recent Strat, a 2005 American Series, has exactly that same route, right down to the mysterious round holes; one under the 'guard and one in the pocket. We were wondering what those were on a thread a few months ago, but without a conclusive answer. My guess was something to do with positioning the body on the CNC machines...?

Keep it up. I love hard work - I could watch it all day long.

Cheers - C

hmmm gives me an idea. think im going to look at some block inserts whilst ive got the body open, just to hear the difference it must make one.
Anybody got ideas on how to attatch inserts, glue/dowel.

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paint arrived today. it only got one pass over due to the weather, im planning on 4. Does anyone have any idea on the number of laquer coats to be used with nitrocellulose laquer or is it just a 1 coat job?

anyway pics soon im planning for a monday tuesday finish.

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Hey nikininja, thats a pretty neat job! What kind of paint and varnish did you use? I really want to do my own paintjob one day, but i don't know enough yet!

thats just the primer on the last picture. I started spraying paint about 2 hours ago when the rain stopped. Its nitrocellulose based daphne blue paint to be finished with a nitrocellulose lacquer, and is proving to be a real test. im trying to keep the layers of paint down to a minimum but have a deep colour, so its spray thinly then polish and keep repeating that procedure till the colour is constant all the way across the guitar.

I bought my paint here

http://www.tonetechluthiersupplies.co.uk/Lacquer-and-Paint/156-Cellulose-Paint-Daphne-Blue/Detailed-product-flyer.html

This is the same stuff in the usa

http://reranchstore.stores.yahoo.net/daphneblue.html

Standard block colours aren't too hard just time consuming, once you've sanded the body down imperfections in your sanding dont show up too well until there's a coat of paint on. so i give the guitar a light spray of car primer paint with the intention of sanding it back off. Then it gets another coat of primer a little heavier and other smaller imperfections usually arise. these i sand out but just the spots not the surrounding area. then i touch the primer up again on the spots I've sanded. Half hour later when that's dry i smooth the primer out lightly with 2000grit sandpaper. Then you can spray the paint itself. Its all in the preparation you cant fix a problem that happened on the first coat with the last coat of paint.

like i say its not particularly skillful just time consuming and you need to pay a lot of attention to each stage. If you want to have a go at it i suggest you use a cheap guitar. The first time i attempted it was on a unplayable explorer copy, you dont loose out if anything goes wrong then.

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