stripping and painting question

V

VertuGoGo

New member
can anybody refer me to a website that has instructions on stripping and painting electric guitars? i have a cort les paul custom copy that got vandalized (minor, but it bothers me) and i decided to give it a new finish altogether. my drummer is a set designer by trade, so he knows how to work with woods and paint. but he doesn't have experience working with guitars.

i'm actually deciding between painting and staining (reddish tint), and leaning towards staining because it seems easier to do.
 
When I lived in Colorado I used to buy a product named Aircraft Stripper Number 10, cant find it here in the east. I stripped quite a few guitars with it. Just paint it on, wait the proscriped time and the finish comes off very easily.
 
at one time i thought repainting a guitar would be fun & simple......then i went and visited the mcinturff plant here in raleigh and saw what really takes place.

what i learned- if you want it done well, let someone else w/ the equipment and experience do it.
 
no clue on a specific site but its not as hard as folks seem to think. Sand the b'jesus out of it until you have nothing but wood. Super fine grit by the end of it. Steel wool the whole show with 3-5 different grades of wool, sit back and look at it in several different lighting situations. If you have good grain and it is real wood then use a gel stain. Gel stains are the best of both worlds. You can color the stain to suit your desire, as well as the natural shade of the wood. use a cloth or stain pad for each coat. One coat... let it dry 24 hours then steel wool it. Second coat same deal. Depending on how dark the natural wood is, and the specific tone you want it to have you will apply 3-5 coats of the gel. Let it sit for fourty eight hours and then apply a few coats of tung oil. Tada its a work of art.
 
if i can have the job done for around $100 i'll just pay a professional to do it. but i may go half and half--have a professional do the stripping and have my friend do the coloring. he was telling me about the stuff he can do with paint and wood and how he can make the wood look exotic.

if we were to do the entire job, i have a question about the binding. do we sand it off? do we avoid it? do we peel it off?
 
the binding is going to have to go as well in the stripping. No worries, its simply a cosmetic thing like the pinstripe on a car. It lays over the seams of the sections of wood. If its a solid body guitar than you dont even need the binding as the body is one flat slab of wood. Any guitar that has sides that are glued to a top will have a pencil thin seam where the pieces are united. You can buy binding strips and just lay it down real pretty all around the body. Binding can be either adhesive (with a sticky back) that you can use pretty much like tape, or as a dry bead f paper. If its the plain ol dry type, then apply it after a fresh coat of gel or tung oil. but befor the final coat. The fresh coat of stain will act as a glue as you lay it down. I would steer you towards the adhesive type for a first time job. Laying a dry paper on fresh stain gets tricky and the last thing you want is a great finish, delicate binding... and fingerprints all over hell.
But in a nutshell you will need to remove the old binding if you want a clean flawless finish. Sand it right off, no worries its pretty thin.
 
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