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Post subject: Help with guitar finish
Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 8:05 am
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Hello to everyone. I am a new member and have been recommended this group by a professional blues player, (and predominately a strat player :), who thought you guys would be helpful with an issue i am dealing with. I have a strat made in Japan in 1994 that I am trying to strip down to the bare wood. Here is the problem. I have removed the original black laquer only to find a very hard thick clear coat underneath that I am having trouble removing. (Is this standard practice putting a hard thick coat on before the laquer or paint?) Does anyone know what the coating is? I am using a stripper made by Jasco that is supposed to remove everything including polyeurathane, shellac & epoxy, but is not breaking into this stuff. The serial number on the neck is T012790 if that helps any. My thought is that the guitar was originally supposed to be wood with a clear coat and someone at the factory may have made a decision to change it to black laquer. Any ideas?


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Post subject: Re: Help with guitar finish
Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 9:30 am
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darien7 wrote:
Hello to everyone. I am a new member and have been recommended this group by a professional blues player, (and predominately a strat player :), who thought you guys would be helpful with an issue i am dealing with. I have a strat made in Japan in 1994 that I am trying to strip down to the bare wood. Here is the problem. I have removed the original black laquer only to find a very hard thick clear coat underneath that I am having trouble removing. (Is this standard practice putting a hard thick coat on before the laquer or paint?) Does anyone know what the coating is? I am using a stripper made by Jasco that is supposed to remove everything including polyeurathane, shellac & epoxy, but is not breaking into this stuff. The serial number on the neck is T012790 if that helps any. My thought is that the guitar was originally supposed to be wood with a clear coat and someone at the factory may have made a decision to change it to black laquer. Any ideas?


If you have used a general purpose stripper and it hasn't worked, then that's an unusual finish. Fender has used both nitrocellulose lacquer and polyurethane, both of which should come off readily with your chosen solvent.

At your local home improvement store you'll find a section with solvents and strippers. One of them might work, but you could wind up buying cans of solvent you don't need. Find an educated salesman and tell him your problem. The educated salesmen work the day shift.

As an alternative, you could scuff it with a sander and use the clear finish as a base coat for what follows. There is some risk in that of course. Your new finish might not be compatible. Of course you could just sand off the old finish entirely. That would be a real pain, but ultimately it would work. Just be careful. Don't breathe that stuff.

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Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 10:30 am
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I experienced the same problem stripping a 95 mexican strat. A very thick coat of polyester finish. I believe its used to damp down the treble poplar/basswood bodies can have in excessive ammounts. I tried nitromors it didnt make a dent, so i sanded. And sanded, and sanded, and sanded. I got there eventualy. I weighed the guitar body prior to stripping and after. The scales showed a 1.5ilb odd difference in weight. The wood had a very bland texture too, hardly any grain. Not very suitable for wood finishes. Alder is the usuall wood of choice for strat bodies but out east poplar or basswood is very popular. I'd check the weight of the guitar, strats weigh in at 7.5ilb - 9/10ilb average. Poplar and basswood are very light, alder is mid weighted and ash is heaviest. If you've a heavy guitar its ash or alder, if its light its basswood.

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Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 11:23 am
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Not sure what the coating is, but I had a similar situation when I stripped my 98 MIA strat (black) ro refinish it in wood stain. There were a few layers of different things if I remember.

I used some stripper to soften the finish, but mainly used a dewalt palm sander for the larger parts and a dremel for the tight spots (neck curve, etc).

Image

There's my son helping sand it two years ago. There was the black paint (thick), then that pinkish layer you see mainly, then a very thin black layer, then some clear coat or something. I took a LOT of extra time to make sure that last coat was completely off, so the wood grain wasn't goofed up. Just when I though I sanded most of it off, it seemed like more. But it was worth it.

It went from this...

Image

to this...

Image

The tone changed a lot too when I got that paint off. Much warmer and a clearer tone.


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Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 3:28 pm
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In the '70's Fender used some kinda epoxy resin to coat the guitar bodies. Not every guitar had it on them & my first encounter was bacl in '79 with a '76 Mustang bass. After I had tried EVERYTHING short of acid, I just waxed the damn thing & never looked back. I own a '77 Strat that was surely stripped down to the resin and weighs a ton as well as an '81 Strat likewise. It won't hurt to leave it on though.


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Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 4:19 pm
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The polyurethane is next to imposible to strip I use Kleen Strip Aircraft paint remover found at auto paint stores. You can get it in spay cans most times. Most paint and finish stripers won't remove Poly very good at all but the automotive stuff does.

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