My buddies guitar refinishing project

New Guitar Day? Obsessed with tone? 10 on the volume dial not enough? Celestion vs. Electrovoice? Cum in, feel the noize.
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liv_rong
Posts: 1953
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2017 7:32 pm

My buddies guitar refinishing project

Post by liv_rong »


I’d been wanting to do this for a long time, and a perfect candidate came up on Reverb for $250. D’Agostino isn’t a well known brand, but they made some really great guitars (I also own one of their DBE-1 models from the 1970s). This one is Korean made, set neck, mahogany body and neck, maple top, and rosewood board.

There are several factors that made this my perfect candidate:

I set out to do a natural wood finish, and I could see the top grain was decent.

Gnarly scratches and missing hardware made it priced to sell, and a no-brainer to refurbish.

I’ve never had a Floyd Rose, so this fills a gap in my arsenal. HSS is a nice bonus. My only HSS is my first pawn shop electric and it’s pretty much unplayable now.

Process:

After removing all the hardware, I started taking off layers of lacquer with card scrapers. Then I sanded with 80-120 grit until I got to bare wood. I’d originally wanted to do it all by hand, but it became pretty tedious, so I busted out my oscillating tool. I still had to do a lot by hand but that sped up the process considerably.

Once I had totally bare wood, I progressively fine sanded all the way up to 3000 grit. The wood felt like glass when I was done.

The rest was easy. I just wiped on thin coats of Birchwood Casey Tru-Oil, which is a mixture of linseed oil and varnish. It’s actually made for gun stocks, but a friend who has built his own guitars recommended it to me, and I’m really pleased with how it turned out. Twelve coats total.

Then I scuffed the neck a little with 0000 steel wool, put all the hardware back on, soldered all my connections, and voila!

Total investment was less than $400, and $50 of that was for card scrapers and a burnisher. I ordered about $50 in parts from StewMac (knobs, screws, FR parts, cavity cover). Another $20 for the Tru-Oil and sandpaper.

This was a great experience, and I now have something that I really put myself into. Hope you dig it!
[BBvideo=560,315]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5gGlfz ... e=youtu.be[/BBvideo]
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Lt. Bob
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Joined: Wed Jan 04, 2017 3:02 pm

Re: My buddies guitar refinishing project

Post by Lt. Bob »

cool ..... I've been watching that at A&A in between insulting ghost.
I didn't realize there was a vid.
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Armistice
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Joined: Wed Jan 04, 2017 4:06 pm
Location: Orstralia

Re: My buddies guitar refinishing project

Post by Armistice »

Lt. Bob wrote: Sat Jan 13, 2018 4:53 pm cool ..... I've been watching that at A&A in between insulting ghost.
I didn't realize there was a vid.
Ghost lives? I'll have to rock over and poke him... :mrgreen:


That's a really nice looking finished result liv!
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Bubba
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Joined: Wed Jan 04, 2017 2:45 pm
Location: Checking out my haggard face in the mirror.

Re: My buddies guitar refinishing project

Post by Bubba »

I could've done without that horrible worrible music. Had to mute it.

Looked good in the end!
Haggard Musician :mad:
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rayc
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Joined: Wed Jan 04, 2017 6:31 pm
Location: South of Bundaberg North of Brisbane

Re: My buddies guitar refinishing project

Post by rayc »

The wood looked fine. I'm not a fan of book matched (?) and heavily figured stuff so this guitar looked good to me.
I've tried to do this task but sanding inside the bouts towards the neck drove me to distraction and a premature end.
Cheers
rayc
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Greg_L
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Location: Where the knuckle meets the poophole

Re: My buddies guitar refinishing project

Post by Greg_L »

I like watching refinishing videos. I've been watching a bunch of those cheesy swirl paint job vids lately. Lol. Very cool process, horrible result.
Rebel Yell
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