No time like the present - especially considering it's Sunday.
Departed, denecked, ready to be deglossed. I hate gloss finishes with a passion: if I wanted reflections, I'll play a mirror topped guitar. Note the reflection of Rocket is sharper than D. Dumb...
The bridge ferrules were glued in place, and had obviously been hammered in, as there were cracks from them to the pickup cavity. So I'll work around them.
I've learnt a lot of tips over the years on how to work on guitars, a ton of them from old school characters who did work in the 70s. Some of their methods were crude, even goofy, but often effective. Time to pull one out of the way back machine!
So, like most Epis, this axe has a thick poly finish: it won't wear off, but chip through. Back before heat guns were readily available, this was a trick a lot of guitar repairers did to speed the process:
Departed, denecked, ready to be deglossed. I hate gloss finishes with a passion: if I wanted reflections, I'll play a mirror topped guitar. Note the reflection of Rocket is sharper than D. Dumb...
The bridge ferrules were glued in place, and had obviously been hammered in, as there were cracks from them to the pickup cavity. So I'll work around them.
I've learnt a lot of tips over the years on how to work on guitars, a ton of them from old school characters who did work in the 70s. Some of their methods were crude, even goofy, but often effective. Time to pull one out of the way back machine!
So, like most Epis, this axe has a thick poly finish: it won't wear off, but chip through. Back before heat guns were readily available, this was a trick a lot of guitar repairers did to speed the process:
Laugh if you want to, but it works. You need to wipe or spray the guitar with a fast burning liquid, in this case I used rubbing alcohol (DON'T use lighter fluid or another petroleum based product). You're not trying to set the thing ablaze, but rather heat the clear coat until it starts separating from the primer, or from the wood. Crude, yes, but effective. A little scraping, a boatload of sanding and viola - stripped.
You're going for blisters, like these:
That's where to start scraping. Note D is still glossy as hell :( The beads of liquid are rubbing alcohol residue, which concentrates when it doesn't burn. Note the lack of charring.
A few more flashes of flame later, and the top is coming off nicely:
In this case, I probably flashed flamed D for about 15 minutes, top, back and sides. Charred a bit of the back from alcohol runoff, but since I'm spraying, it shouldn't matter much. And it's *still* glossy enough to reflect the trees!
Inside my workshop to start adding finesse to the process and check it out: it's an overspray! Back in the day, they'd keep burning or sanding to remove the last of the clear coat. Nowadays, we've got heat guns.
I've always believed in physical removal of finishes, as opposed to chemical stripping. I sold paints for years, and I'll let you in on a little secret: most strippers don't work on thick finishes. Period. And the few that do require litre after litre and leave a huge mess that stains everything around it. Just buy a heat gun: mine was $15.
A chunk of finish off the back. A *BIG* chunk.
Should've left it like this... The black that you see is paint, all of the clear coat is gone. Check out the back:
It's a work of art! Now a little 40 grit and it comes right off.
Here's about 2 minutes on the back:
Close enough. That spot on the right is part of the char, it reacted with a previous touch up. I'll prime over it.
And as usual, they didn't seal the edges at the factory. Again, because a solid finish is going on this, I ain't that concerned...
Just gotta sand more. Smooth stuff out a tad more. Between coats, I'll raise the grain with more alcohol.
A friend of mine who's a **far** better woodworker than me taught me this trick. Alcohol will raise the grain as well as water, but dries faster and won't absorb into the wood. A quick dusting, a quick wipe, yer ready for the next grit in 5 minutes, not an hour.
I was a little overzealous in my scraping, as usual. I'll just smooth these out a bit, I don't think the divots will bother me that much...
I sanded 40-80-150-220, simply because that's what I had lying around. And all with this:
$20 Mastercrap 1/4 Sheet sander. I gave up on random orbit sanders because the discs are such a hassle: they leave marks, and you never have the grits at hand you need. Plus, with regular paper, I'm more willing to pitch out 40% used sheets at 20¢ each, vs $1.50 a disc. I'm a cheap Scot, folks, and not unproud of it...
But if you're gonna do any medium to large amounts of sanding, buy one of these:
It's referred to in Canada as a Crepe Block. It's a coarse rubber-like block you use to clean your sandpaper. You can extend even crap paper to 3-5 times it's normal workspan just by cleaning and declogging it with a Crepe Block. Mine was $5 at Home Despot.
Heat guns are an axe-saver on the waists and cutaways - so much easier than sanding. A little foam sanding block to clean up where the sander wouldn't fit...
The lickin' stick (or dipstick) mounted.
That whole process was about 2 1/2 hours, including breaks, pic taking and video shooting. And I was prepping ribs for the grill at the same time.
Ready to paint! The Punk Rock way!
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