ShortScale.org

I've had this '74 Mustang sitting around for a while. I picked it up with the intention of refinishing it when I found the time.
I also grabbed a '72 single tree neck with tuners off eBay for a good by it now price.



With all the hoopla about nitro and it being all the rage everywhere I look, I kind of fell for all the bullshit. I researched refinishing quite a bit and read through the reranch forums before making an order with them. From everything I read it sounded like the key is to be patient and not be in a hurry to get the guitar back together. Since this guitar never gets played, waiting shouldn't be a problem and I was once a commercial painter for 10 years. It all seemed so easy.
I decided on doing the body and headstock in Sherwood Green with a Seafoam Green competition stripe, just to be different.
I started by taking the guitar apart, sanding it down and spraying a white shellac based primer on it. As you can see from the pictures the guitar had the paint stripped off it (was originally Olympic White) and the previous owner put some kind of clear coat on it. Yet one more reason hippies shouldn't be allowed to touch musical instruments!
Right away there were a few problem areas where the primer wouldn't take too well. I let it fully dry, resanded those areas and reprimed.
At this point everything was going pretty well.

So after a day of drying I set about putting on the color coats. While I was waiting for it to dry I put a fresh coat of LPB in nitro on my Swinger with great results. The flake in the LPB was kickass and gave a real deep look. I felt pretty confident on how the paint flowed, so I started painting the Mustang. It was Ok I guess, but nothing like how the Swinger turned out. I then started looking at pictures of Sherwood Green and sooooo realized - I hate that fucking color. It is not at all what I thought it would look like and not nearly as metal flakey as I wanted.
I let it dry and went back to the drawing board by sanding and priming.....again.

I took a trip to the suburbs to check out spray paint at an auto supply store (can't by spray paint within Chicago).
I got a can of metal flake orange and a can of yellow.
I sprayed out samples of both and went with yellow.




I let it dry to the touch and put on a coat of tinted clear on the test body to darken it. It came out close enough to comp orange, so I was happy.


The headstock went a lot faster, so I was able to do three coats of color and a couple tinted coats all within a few hours.

Looking good.I like both colors.

You can see in the previous pictures that I left some dings and dents in the body. The way I figured it is this, With the tinted clear to age the guitar and the rusty screws and shit that were going to go back on it, it would look ridiculous with a pristene body.

I did a test of the comp stripe using paint I got from the auto supply shop to see how much the tape would bleed.


It wasn't too bad, but decided to do it in Fiesta Red nitro instead. The auto store paint wasn't close enough for me.
I let the guitar sit for about a day before laying out the stripes and checked it in a spot under the pickguard to see if the tape would lift off the finish or leave any residue. Satisfied it was ok, I started marking the stripes.





I must say I did a more accurate job with my measurements then Fender did. It is dead on 1/4"-1/8"-1/2"-1/8"-1/4".
I used low tack one inch painters tape, marked out the widths and cut it with a straight edge and razor.

Here is a shot of the headstock against the body to show how fucking cool it was going to turn out. The tinted clear did just what I wanted - darken/age the finish, but not uniformly.
Also note white decal!
At this point I was real happy with the way things were going.

Arrrgh. I hate knowing that this thread is going to have an unhappy ending when it looks so cool right now!

MaMo wrote:Arrrgh. I hate knowing that this thread is going to have an unhappy ending when it looks so cool right now!

+1. I'm dreading what's coming. I'm also curious to see what goes wrong.

bassintom wrote:Looking good.I like both colors.

Thanks Tom, but here's the fucking heart breaker.
When I was at the auto store I looked at a bunch of different colors and picked out a few of them. I checked the labels on everything, but put back some cans and grabbed others and it all turned into a confusing mess. I spent too much time staring at paint and wanted to get the hell out of there. I took what I had in my basket, paid and left.
Now I should explain the time line of everything too.
After priming over the Serwood Green debacle and respraying it yellow I needed to let it fully dry (about 24 hours) before masking the stripes. The headstock was done in a matter of hours.
My plan was to spray a bunch of straight clear over everything and do a couple final passes with tinted. That way play wear over time would take off some of the tinted coat and look more natural.
I started spraying clear and to my horror the paint started to wrinkle!!! I didn't understand it. I sprayed a sample on the test body, where I had already had tinted over yellow, and that wrinkled too!!!
It was fucking Baffling. I didn't get it. The headstock still looks great, but needs a coat of clear over the decal. I don't want to risk fucking that up too.
After a bit more research I found I made a critical error. In my confusion getting the yellow paint I grabbed god damned enamel. A bunch more reading later I learned that if you try to re coat enamel after 24 hours you've essentially fucked yourself. Not only that, but Lacquer and enamel DO NOT go together at all.
It's still a mystery to me as to how the stripes turned out fine and they are nitro.
The flash on my camera doesn't really capture the devistation too well, but you get the picture.

Oh, the humanity, Oh, the horror......

rodvonbon wrote:Yet one more reason hippies shouldn't be allowed to touch musical instruments!l

Come on. I had to bust on you, especially since the green was so righteous. Sucks about the enamel. Fuckin A. I have sprayed acrylic lacquer and nitro laquer, but enamel is bad news. I have had to sand it off before and it gums up everything.

Hippie urethane actually sands pretty easily. The main advantages of nitro (besides the cool sounding name) is that it will age and crack (aesthetics), and form a hard shell over time. The older it gets, the harder it gets. And if it ever gets out of control, you can spray blush-out on it an re-soften it. Gibson uses it and so does Martin.

I am going to be doing some body work on my truck bumper soon, so I will get to experiment with acrylic lacquer.

shitty deal man,
hey, btw, where the hell did that dot and bound neck come from?

DGNR8 wrote:have sprayed acrylic lacquer and nitro laquer, but enamel is bad news. I have had to sand it off before and it gums up everything.

The pisser is that I know better. When I was getting the paint all I looked at was acrylic lacquer and just grabbed the wrong can by mistake...aarrggghhh!!
I was crushed about it yesterday, but just checked today and surprisingly most of the wrinkle has setteled down. It definitely put a texture to the finish just not as bad as it was yesterday. I used some 400 grit sand paper and it looks like I will be able to smooth it out, but it takes the shine with it.
I read that if you let enamel sit for 5 days you can then reapply paint over it. I'm still not sure about putting lacquer over it though, somewhere I read says if you do some light 'dusting' coats it might be ok. I guess I can just wait till next week and spray in a spot under the pickguard and see what happens. If I need to redo the entire thing I s'pose I'll have to. Don't what i'm gonna do about the color though. The neck is soooo nice and I don't have any more white decals...

robert(original) wrote:shitty deal man,
hey, btw, where the hell did that dot and bound neck come from?

Hehehehe....good eye, it's another 'project' that's going much better.

really let it dry good, and you should be fine with the lacquer. i did the same thing once when refinishing a wooden rocking chair for my mom. i ended up letting it dry, and going back over it with lacquer and turned out phenomenal. give it time, i know how it feels right after though!

YOU ARE IN MY PRARYERS ROD

all i know is that binding and dots are hot as fuck, and i want to see what you are doing with it, and where the hell did you score it?
i assume that its a jaguar neck since your not a fan of full scale necks.

robert(original) wrote:all i know is that binding and dots are hot as fuck, and i want to see what you are doing with it, and where the hell did you score it?
i assume that its a jaguar neck since your not a fan of full scale necks.

I'll start a new thread for it.

You will fix it. You will make it good again.

You have an awesome plan and I am sure you are the man to execute it - keep the faith, that comparison shot after the tinted lacquer with the Comp Oranges is inspiration itself.

Stay On Target.

And how about t hat Bronco?

So after mulling it over for another day I came up with a new half assed plan.
I've got to leave for Indianapolis on Monday for work and won't be home till Friday afternoon, so I'm just going to forget about it until I get back. Maybe by then the enamel will harden enough that just a scruffing of sand paper will smooth it out and the lacquer will take. If not I'm going to sand the whole thing out and start from scratch. This time I might use up the left over LPB from the Swinger and do Seafoam Green stripes. I found a guy that's doing my Jag decal and will just get a new white one made for it. I don't really want another blue guitar, but at the same time I didn't really want another yellow one either. I guess I could always make another order to reranch and do something completly different. If that happens I'll need some inspiration.
I wish the pictures had turned out better, they really don't do it justice. I started spraying on the back side of the body and as I started to rotate it to the front the whole thing looked like alligator skin. The chemical reaction happened that fast and I stopped before I got too into the front side.

Mike wrote:You will fix it. You will make it good again.

You have an awesome plan and I am sure you are the man to execute it - keep the faith, that comparison shot after the tinted lacquer with the Comp Oranges is inspiration itself.

Stay On Target.

Inspiring words to persevere.
Could you change the thing under my user name to read 'guitar fucker upper' ?