Primer

I can finally put some paint on! I'm going to put all the colour coats on the bodies first, then do all the clear lacquering of the necks and bodies at the same time. The colour coats will be the most fiddly, as they're not only different colours (black, silver and now white for the strat) but also require different coloured primers (black and silver want grey primer, white wants white) meaning that there'll be lots of equipment cleaning to do :( 

First off, I masked off the binding on the hollow telecaster to keep it safe from the paint.

The tape is put a hair's width on the 'binding side' of the line between the plastic binding and the wood. This will make sure that there is definitely paint all the way up to the binding with no wood visible between the two: 



The tape is put on, then trimmed. I like my neck pockets to remain unpainted, so they're also masked off:



Then they're hung in the workshop, and hit with a first coat of grey primer:



This is cellulose primer, sold by Rothko and Frost. The guitars will get five or six coats of this today at 30-45 minute intervals. 

I had a bit of a disaster at this point. I dislodged the solid body guitar from it's hanging, it fell and put a significant dent into the wood. I had to sand it back and fill the dent using epoxy. I'll come back to prime it once I've flattened and resanded that area.

The hollow body, however, was fine, and ended up with five coats of primer. I think that should be enough:



And once the masking has been removed:



There's visible orange peel in the finish. I'll probably flatten it a bit once it's cured for a couple of days.

It's impossible to mask the binding on the front and rear faces of the guitar. That just gets painted, and the paint is then scraped off. I used a craft knife blade to do this: 



Using my thumb to hold the blade in place, I scraped around the guitar. This came out surprisingly well - there's one area where I scraped slightly too much off (less than 0.5mm), and wood is visible, but I don't think that will be important as the colour coat will cover up the mistake.

I've read that it's better to scrape the paint from the bindings as you go, once the paint is touch dry. If it's left too long, the paint will harden, making it more likely to chip as you scrap. Having said that, I've just seen a youtube video of Gibson's method, which appears to be to leave it until the very end... 

Here's the whole guitar as it currently stands, I actually quite like the colour :] :

 

This guitar will cure for a couple of weeks, I'll get the other one and the strat primed in the meantime. 

omg more sanding...

I've not been doing a lot recently, and what I have been doing doesn't really lend itself to pictures / descriptions. However, both bodies and necks are now completely ready for lacquering. Here's a close up of one of the smooth sides at 400 grit:



hmm, silky. 

And here's all the bodies lined up:



You may notice an extra one has snuck in... that's from a strat body I was building and which was almost finished. It was the first one I'd painted myself, and the paint was a little thicker than it needs to be. I thought I may as well take the opportunity now to redo it so stripped it back. Three bodies + two necks is actually now a bit more work than I wanted...

Here it is from a couple of month ago, almost finished:



And here it is now, grain filler curing, No longer even close :] 



It's possible the eventual owner reads this blog and I haven't told him about this yet :] 

I'm gong to start lacqering very soon - certainly be the end of this week I'll be in a position to if the weather gets a bit less damp and rainy. It's going to be a fairly intense schedule of three different colours as well as a lot of amber / clear. 

Grain filling the bodies

Using the Z poxy resin, I got both guitars up to the same point where all their backs, fronts and sides had been coated. Here you can see the tint the grain filler gives:

The bodies are left for a couple of days, then I attacked them both with 320 then 400 grit sandpaper, knocking the top of the expoxy off so that it only really remains in the grain. I'm not sure if this picture really shows much, but the gloss of the epoxy is gone and the surface is completely smooth:

Having sanded back all the surfaces, I applied a second coat of grain filler, which again will be sanded back, this time with 400 then 600 grit. At that point, the guitars will be ready for their first coats of nitro. 

Here they are, curing in the workshop (which will need considerable tidying / de-dusting before spraying starts...):

 

They'll both getting solid colours (black for the hollow body, inca silver for the solid).