Guitar Painting

noble savage

noble savage

Member
Oct 28, 2004
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Indiana
Hey guys,

I know a few of you on here have built your own guitars and I was wondering if you could help me out.

A few years ago a friend and I where bored over summer vacation and we ended buying green spray paint and painting my Ibanez RG 7420. Now every time I play it, I get clear coat stuck on my arm. I have been putting it off for too long. I think I'm going to go out today and buy some sand paper and sand it down to the wood.

I suppose lacquering it depends on how good the wood grain is. My guess is it's not so great. But I could be wrong. So do any of you have experience in properly painting guitars? What kind of paints and/or airbrush etc? Thanks!:)
 
Yep, you need to airbrush it. OUTSIDE. Or in a well ventilated room. And leave it hanging for a while before applying more coats. Those resources ^ are great starting points.
 
Thanks a lot for the links, ABQ. They helped a lot!:kickass:

Ken, if the wood looks OK (I'll take a picture when I'm done stripping it later to see what you guys think) I may go with a varnish/lacquer finish. Would a layer-sand-layer-sand etc process work?

If that's not an option, are there places that rent out airbrushes? I don't own one, nor do I really have the money to buy one.
 
You can do it that way but you have to be careful about evenness and dripping. Ideally you'd use a finer grain sandpaper after each layer until it's a smooth shiny surface. (Or flat if that's what you're going for.) Be careful of the various screwholes and pickup holes. You want to make sure that when you're done, you can still put the pieces in there. Some sanding/drilling might be necessary.
 
Varnish as in no colour? I wouldn't bother with the basswood.

Ken's pretty much covered it, go down to your local hardware store and buy a bunch of sandpaper in rising grades (something like 200,400,800).
 
basswood isn't that nice of a wood for staining/varnishing/laquering, imo, but if YOU like it, that's all that matters.
If it's a basswood body (fairly certain it is...) then I'd paint it, that's just my opinion though...
 
J-Dubya 777 said:
basswood isn't that nice of a wood for staining/varnishing/laquering, imo, but if YOU like it, that's all that matters.
If it's a basswood body (fairly certain it is...) then I'd paint it, that's just my opinion though...
Click to expand...

That's my thoughts. RG is almost definitely basswood.

A rattle can shouldn't cost you too much, the "quality" will come in the finish, i.e. Time spent on prep & sanding and quality of the clear coat.
 
Well, I just had a thought.

Would high quality spray can paints work fine for the color, then maybe a paint on (The kind that comes in a can) clear coat? I'm still a little weary on spray can paints...
 
I don't think I'm metal enough for that. What would people think if, when playing live, I had a guitar painted in my own blood while covering a Flower Kings song?:lol:
 
progmetaldan said:
They could only conclude that you'd got the blood from gay, hippy-sex... :erk:
Click to expand...


Wow, that was a little... Uhhh... You aren't accusing me of having bloody, gay. hippy sex are you? Besides, I don't like hippies. They want to save the environment, but all they do is smoke pot and smell bad.
 
I've done a fiar amount of painting over the years (autobody). As well as various woodwork and some guitar finishing but that was years ago. If that thing is gummy you want to use stripper, you'll do nothing but clog sandpaper, so you'll have to remove all hardware, Including the neck. Now you probably dont want to do this... hmm... why is it gummy ? You may have used two non compatable paints. Did you just spray it green or put clear over after? I dont understand this clear coat on the arm bit ?????

Shit... before I go any further I need to know what you did... lol ! What did you do to the old/origional finish before you threw green spray paint at it ? AND please try to explain this clear coat on the arm bit.

It may be possible to rub that stuff off with laquer thinner but I really need to know what you did.
 
Well, I layered green spray paint and when it dried I put on about 5 layers of cheap clear coat type stuff (I don't remember the brand name). When I would play it for more than 10 minutes, the layer of clear would soften/melt onto my arm and hand. I don't even sweat a lot!:err:

I bought paint remover today and just finished removing all of it a few hours ago. That shit seeped through heavy duty latex gloves and made me absolutely retarded for a few hours.

Razor, the only thing I'm worried about now is buying the proper clear coat this time. Do you know of any that produces the shell like layer found on factory paintings? I have oodles of time for a few weeks, so sanding 20-30 layers is no problem.

Oh also, when we where doing it, we realized the original finish was think as hell after sanding for hours, so we just sprayed a white layer of paint over it.
 
what did you do with your hardware... pups, volumn/tone pots, ect ? stripper could raise hell with them like it did those gloves ?
 
I made a diagram of the volume pots/pickups on paper. I'm going to re-sauder when I'm finished. Yay! More harmful fumes!:lol:
 
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