I screwed up! A freak accident left a nasty ding in my strat. It's a sunburst body, but luckily the ding is in the black part, so I think the chip can be filled. I'm just not sure how. It seems from what I've read that the best thing to do is fill it with lacquer, sand smooth, apply clear and sand again. Then buff. What type of lacquer should I use? Or is there a better way to do this? I'm afraid to mess it up with wood putty and stuff.

we need more info. Pictures would be nice for sure.

But we'll need to know what model it is, so we know what type of finish it has.
there can be slightly different approaches to it.
Just filling a ding with lacquer can cause problems, depending on the type of finish, you can create bigger problems if you approach it the wrong way.

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

Here is a link to a folder of pics. The neck pics are to aid in identifying the guitar. There is also a pic of the guitar itself to help. I can tell you that it was made in 2000 in Mexico. It had R written in big red script all over the inside if that tells you anything. The other photos are the best closeups I could get of the spot. My camera kinda sucks.

http://www5.snapfish.com/snapfish/thumb ... =snapfish/

What? I have to register with snap fish to view the photos? Not happening. Can you upload them here, or photobucket or somewhere else, that does not require registration?

Well I know how annoying dings can be but it also depends on the guitar. If it is a player or my #1 as I have 3 guitars that never really go in there case and are my dead out players, the dings and dents come with the territory and also give the ax charector. It is also going to depend on if it is a Poly or Nitro finish. A Nitro in the right hands can be fixed to just about an invisible repair where as a Nitro cannot.

I have no idea how to post pics to this site. I've tried, but never had success. If you don't wanna go on snapfish or photobucket, or whatver site I used, so be it. There's no shortage of people on this site that wanna give advice. It's never been a problem before. Yes, I'd love to just post the pics on here, but it always gives me grief.

In response to straycat:
I hear what you're saying and most people would probably say just leave it alone and call it "character". If this were my old squier, I'd have smacked it again just so the first chip didn't feel lonely. But, it's my fender. Sure, it's not a vintage American Strat, it's you run of the mill MIM sunburst, but it is a fender which ain't bad for a college student trying making ends meet on the GI Bill. I got a good deal on it, built it up with some custom shop components and I'm proud of it. My girlfriend almost cried when she saw the damge because she knew how much I loved the guitar. I only have a few nice things and I considered my strat one of them. In that respect, I'd like to fix it up a little. It sickens me every time I look at that nasty chip when I've tried so hard to care for the guitar. I had just cleaned it up the night before (kinda ironic). Frankly, the next time I catch some punk rocker smashing a guitar I think I'll stomp his grungy face into the asphalt just out of principle.