Trying to love the unlovable

[Greg_L]

I don't think it's any secret around here that I'm not a fan of Strats and Teles.

But I have this Strat...


It's an early 1990 Mexican Strat. I've had it since around 1991/1992. My dad got it from one of his friends who had a kid that never played it, so they gave it to me. I have played it. I've played the shit out of it. It was my only guitar for years and years and years. It has no case and has lived a good chunk of it's life bouncing around in the trunk of my GTO and playing sweaty smelly punk rock shows. It's also been a on my albums. It's still in pretty good shape for the life it's lived. The pickguard was originally white, and that looked way too Eric Clapton for me, so it got painted black almost immediately. I've never been fond of the red/black look, but it's better than red/white. I also removed the pickup covers...which I shockingly still have. It's also been modded and rewired extensively. I put a new nut in it. But mostly it's just lived in a gig bag on a stand for the past decade or so. I infinitely prefer my Gibsons and Mosrites, but this lowly Strat has immeasurable sentimental value to me. This guitar loves me. I have not been good about loving it back.

So I'm gonna restore/refurbish it. I took the neck off for the first time ever to have my buddy give it a level and crown. The frets are fucking jacked to hell. He's just learning the craft so I'm letting him get some experience on it. I thought I might have to refret it anyway, so no big deal if he screws it up a little. He's my friend and he's learning and I want him to learn so I'm happy to let him get after it. Being my good friend and having near crippling OCD tendencies I know he'll take precious care to do a good job. From the pics he's sent me it looks like he's doing a great job. Also, this is a Mexican Strat, but I think this neck might be an American neck. It says "Corona" in handwriting on the heel. This is a very early 90s model, right when they began the Mexican lineup. I'm wondering if maybe Fender sent some USA necks down to Mexico to get it started or something. Just speculation, not that it matters to me. I like quirky manufacturing oddities.


The back of the neck was all dinged up and grossly glossy. I asked my buddy to satin it down for me.



The body...ugh. Gonna strip it and paint it. This pic here shows some stripping getting started. This is super thick plasticky poly or enamel or some kind of heavy automotive style paint. It's fucking thick as hell. And very hard. Like a hard candy coating. To it's credit it has withstood my abuse and neglect very admirably. There are large dings and dents in this guitar that didn't even break the paint. Strong stuff. And there are weird circular impressions in the body, like maybe I had some tools laying on it or something while it lived in the trunk of my car throughout the 90s. But none of it broke the paint. I tried the heat gun and scraper on that one little area. It works, but not great. I'm gonna try some chemical paint stripper next. Somehow this paint is coming off.



I have a new pearlized white pickguard on order and my buddy that's doing the neck has a set of 60s or 70s Strat pickups he's gonna give me to try. So that's where it's at right now and I'll update as progress happens.

[JD01]

What colour are you going to go for? Or are you just gonna make a complete bollocks of removing the paint, get pissed off, and then just leave it with the paint half stripped?

[Greg_L]

What colour are you going to go for? Or are you just gonna make a complete bollocks of removing the paint, get pissed off, and then just leave it with the paint half stripped?

That's a possibility. Paint work is not my forte.

I did forget to mention it though. It's gonna be gold flake....like a Dick Dale Strat. Gold flake with white pearl pickguard. Not a Dick Dale replica, but Dick Dale inspired.

[CrowsofFritz]

I’ve always wanted a nitrocellulose lacquer on a guitar. I hate the thick shell.

[Greg_L]

I’ve always wanted a nitrocellulose lacquer on a guitar. I hate the thick shell.

Nitro is IMO the best finish paint there is. It's just great. It's soft and looks good. But it's probably way above my skill set to apply and it takes a long time to fully cure. It never actually "dries", it just cures.

I'm just gonna rattle-can this motherfucker.

My plan is to sand, grain fill/repair the dents, and seal/prime the body. Then I'll lay on a base coat of gold metallic. Maybe green metallic. Maybe copper. Not sure yet. Dick Dale's guitar is kind of greenish-gold. Kind of like a chartreuse gold flake. Green or gold will work as the base coat. Then I'll lay on a few coats of glitter gold paint. Then I'll lay on about a thousand coats of thick clearcoat, wet sand, and polish it. I'll be using spray can enamels so I can build in layers and they dry quick in between.

[rayc]

Greg's Backstory - the stratified history of a punk.
"chartreuse"...that's fairly specific...drink the drink before painting the paint.

[SweetDan]

You know what's the best part of this thread? The picture with the dog in the background. Yay, dogs!

[Greg_L]

You know what's the best part of this thread? The picture with the dog in the background. Yay, dogs!

Yes!

[Greg_L]

I'm not even sure I know who David Gilmour is.


Anyway I got the neck back last night. The frets are pretty low now. They're even and level but he had to take a bunch off, and I expected it to be that way. Thirty years of abuse and misuse left them gacked. I think they'll be workable now though. They're lower than typical Gibson frets but not as small as Mosrite frets so I should be fine. And if it needs new frets so be it. I'll get it re-fretted.

I got some paint stripper last night. So hopefully by tonight this Strat body and the chassis for my bastard Bassman build will be stripped nude.

[Greg_L]

Okay first off....kudos to 80s/90s Fender Corporation for using the most indestructible paint imaginable. You win. I concede.

Here's this fucking cunt of a Strat body slathered in heavy duty chemical stripper....


Poor little guy, you shouldn't have gone in there.



Scraped clean....the fucking chemical stripper didn't even scare this paint. Didn't even bubble, wrinkle, crack, or anything. Did nothing! If it did anything at all, it actually made the paint stronger and better looking.



So here's the deal...new plan. I'm gonna treat this cunt like a car part. This is obviously some kind of indestructo heavy duty plasticized urethane so I'm gonna just treat it like auto body work.





So what I've done here is just left the original paint on there and scuffed it down with 100 grit sandpaper. And lemme tell you, even rough ass 100 grit struggled against this finish. And it smells like fiberglass resin. I've done enough hood scoops and fiberglass repair to know that smell. This is not your usual clearcoat. This stuff is remarkable. I can now see how this guitar bounced around in my trunk for all those years pretty much unfazed by it all. Anyway, a few of the spots where I could actually peel this shit off took wood and grain filler out with it. Fun times. So what I'm gonna do is use plastic filler to smooth those areas back out, level and feather the repairs into the original paint, and resand the whole thing to about 400 grit. Then I'll just spray primer/filler over the whole thing. The primer will grab onto the old scuffed paint and I'll just start the actual finish from there. I'll get into all the various cavities with a flapper wheel.

[vomitHatSteve]

So what I've done here is just left the original paint on there and scuffed it down with 100 grit sandpaper. And lemme tell you, even rough ass 100 grit struggled against this finish. And it smells like fiberglass resin. I've done enough hood scoops and fiberglass repair to know that smell. This is not your usual clearcoat. This stuff is remarkable. I can now see how this guitar bounced around in my trunk for all those years pretty much unfazed by it all. Anyway, a few of the spots where I could actually peel this shit off took wood and grain filler out with it. Fun times. So what I'm gonna do is use plastic filler to smooth those areas back out, level and feather the repairs into the original paint, and resand the whole thing to about 400 grit. Then I'll just spray primer/filler over the whole thing. The primer will grab onto the old scuffed paint and I'll just start the actual finish from there. I'll get into all the various cavities with a flapper wheel.

100 grit? You didn't try some 30 or something to really tear that stuff out?

[JD01]

Did it not even lift up with the heat gun.
Just looking at my old tele actually... its my laying around the house guitar. There's not a mark on it.

[WhiskeyJack]

I can get into this thread. Awesome project dude!!! Love that you are going for the Dick Dale model too. So cool.

I'll second the automotive rattle can enamel type clear coat. It's not the toughest stuff around, but it builds nicely and builds quick. I think when i get around to doing another build I'll likely use it again. Outside of that one super weird alligator skin catalization issue i ran into when i was sanding out the orange peel for the final few coats of clear, i had no issues with it. And even then i managed to sand it all out things were fine. I just lost a bit of the depth of the clear i wanted over the sparkly Pelham blue.

Are you still pretty well connected to all your auto buddies? Would you have access to a proper area set up for spraying and painting in one of their shops? ? If you did, you could maybe convince them to let you have access to it to do your painting and maybe even twist their arm to let you go at it with some nitro if the spray area is ventilated properly?

One thing i ran into was no matter how immaculately dusted and cleaned i got my shop and let it sit, when i did mine it still grew whiskers!

Good luck man. I am stoked to see how this pans out for you.


As for the fender paint stuff, i recall dropping my Elite P-Bass way way back and i chipped a piece of the finish off of that. that shit was THICK!!! and very plasticky. My guess at least 2mm's thick. The way it broke / chipped off, if you looked at the edges of where it broke it looks the same as if you broke a plastic toy in half or a a GI Joe leg snapped in half. no idea what it was and back then i had zero interest in trying to figure it out or have it repaired. Really wish I had.

I am sure Mutt will know almost immediately wtf that stuff might be.

[Greg_L]

100 grit? You didn't try some 30 or something to really tear that stuff out?

100 grit would normally be too aggressive. 30 would leave gouges and more crap to deal with. And....I don't have any 30. I have some 65 grit but it's like rocks glued to paper. It actually just kind of skated across the surface. I could get the 100 grit to at least bite in a little.

Did it not even lift up with the heat gun.

The heat gun would bubble it a little, but the pieces would just flake off in tiny little specs. And worse, the wood would burn under the paint before the paint would lift. See that burn ring on the lower horn? The heat gun did that before the paint would come off. The fucking wood would actually fucking burn before the paint would give up.

Are you still pretty well connected to all your auto buddies? Would you have access to a proper area set up for spraying and painting in one of their shops? ? If you did, you could maybe convince them to let you have access to it to do your painting and maybe even twist their arm to let you go at it with some nitro if the spray area is ventilated properly?

No I'm not touch with anyone with a paint booth. I wouldn't go that far anyway. I'm gonna rattle can glitter bomb this thing. I'm gonna do as good as I can but I'm not hopeful for expert results. Plus, the paint I have in mind is actual glitter suspended in some kind of thin paint. I'll do it outside on a calm day and then bring it in to dry. Eventually I'll get to a stage where I can prime it, then I'll basecoat it, then glitter bomb it, then lay on about 5000 coats of clear to bury the glitter.

[JD01]

Just looking at all that sanding is making my fingers ache...

There's part of me that wants a strat, specifically one that looks like Kurt Cobain's black strat, but I also know I'd never play on it.

[Greg_L]

Just looking at all that sanding is making my fingers ache...

Sanding is a big part of the reason why I refused to get into body work on cars. I've mastered every other part of the things we drive around in, but fixing dents and paint and body repair? Fuck no. Not interested. Never was. There are guys for that and they aint me. I have done it, I can do it if I have to, but I really choose not to.

[vomitHatSteve]

Hmmm... Other solutions

Sandblaster?
Plant a new tree; bury the guitar next to it so the tree grows around the guitar; carve a new strat ouf of the tree?

[WhiskeyJack]

Just looking at all that sanding is making my fingers ache...

Sanding is a big part of the reason why I refused to get into body work on cars. I've mastered every other part of the things we drive around in, but fixing dents and paint and body repair? Fuck no. Not interested. Never was. There are guys for that and they aint me. I have done it, I can do it if I have to, but I really choose not to.

You aren't sanding back to bare wood on this one are you ? Just scuffing off the old clear?

I don't mind the sanding one bit. It is kind of rewarding to me to see something come together layer by layer and grit by grit. I really did miss my calling in life career wise. I really ought to have just explored a trade that had me doing stuff like that.

I know if Elon Musk ever invents a time machine and markets them to the gen pop, the first place i am going is back to 18 year old me and giving him a real hard talking to about a lot of his future life choices.

[Greg_L]

You aren't sanding back to bare wood on this one are you ? Just scuffing off the old clear?

I don't mind the sanding one bit. It is kind of rewarding to me to see something come together layer by layer and grit by grit. I really did miss my calling in life career wise. I really ought to have just explored a trade that had me doing stuff like that.

I know if Elon Musk ever invents a time machine and markets them to the gen pop, the first place i am going is back to 18 year old me and giving him a real hard talking to about a lot of his future life choices.

No I'm not sanding all the way down to wood. It would take too much effort. The parts of exposed wood where the paint did actually come off will be Bondo'd over and smoothed out. It's perfectly acceptable to paint over old paint. You just need to scuff the hell out of it and clean it so the new paints will stick to it. I'm going really rough for now so the Bondo will stick to the old paint where it needs to, and then I'll smooth the whole thing out to around 320 grit and primer the whole thing. Once the primer/sealer is on then I can treat it as a blank canvas.

[Greg_L]

Also, this is kind of almost a stream of consciousness project where things bleed and blend together. I needed paint stripper anyway to strip the chassis for my Bassman build, so I thought while my buddy was fixing the frets on my Strat neck I'd strip the body. That didn't work but I needed the paint stripper anyway. And I also need to fix the bumper I scratched up on my wife's car so I knew I'd be sanding and using plastic filler, so that's another two birds with one stone. So the Bassman chassis, Strat refurb, and wife's bumper will all kind of blend together into one giant clusterfuck!