I have finally finished the guitar! Everything is done and it sounds amazing! I’m going to quickly wrap up the paint process and then soon, I will add a pickup blog and a reassembling and setup blog.

  Body:

·         Last time I wrote, I had finished priming the guitar. As I mentioned in my “steps to come” part of that article, I proceeded with my layer of red. I applied two or three coats of red to the section I needed. There was no point in painting the whole guitar red when a portion of it would remain white.

·         After letting it dry for an entire day, I masked off my red stripes and then painted white. I was notified by a friend who paints guitars that white is extremely hard to work with and that I should use a lot. I later found out what he was talking about. I applied an entire can of white paint to the guitar and I am lucky I did. For some reason, the clear coat seemed to bring out the base colours so if there wasn’t enough white, this could have turned ugly.

·         So, I now had a fully painted guitar. I let it sit for two or three days before I began clear coating. I put on about 5 layers of clear coat one day and then 5 more another day. There was a lot of clear coat. You want to make sure you apply it thinly and evenly. I seemed to have a problem with that because I was outside and it was really windy that week. I ended up getting a pretty even finish; however it resulted in a few runs; but nothing that was too big or bad.

·         Once clear coating was done, I let it sit for a few more days. Then I did a very light wed-sanding job to make sure everything was evened out. It helped remove some of the bumps and even took out a bit of the run. It also removed some of the bug parts that happened to get clear coated into the paint job. After sanding, I used Turtle Wax Scratch and Swirl Remover to polish the guitar. Wow; did it ever get shiny!

And that’s that for painting the guitar. It’s really important to let it sit a few days between the painting, clear coating, and finishing of the guitar. Make sure the paint dries before you do anything to drastic. Now, mine didn’t turn out perfect, but for a first time at it, I’d say I’ve done well for myself.

Headstock:

·         When I left off last time, I had painted red and black on the headstock. After a day of drying, I sprayed on the white paint and let it dry for a couple of days, just like the body.

·         After drying, I got my brother to draw on a design for my headstock logo. I wanted something original and something that would mean something to me. After throwing out ideas, we stumbled upon pi. I have this weird thing about myself where I can recite 60 decimal places of pi and I used to be able to do it in less than 10 seconds. Just using a sharpie pen (0.1 fine), he wrote out 80 digits (which means I need to memorize 20 more decimal places) and drew on the Greek letter for pi. It turned out really well; I’m not sure how he writes so small yet so legibly.

·         I let that sit overnight before throwing on the clear coat the next day. Again, 5 coats one day and 5 another. Pretty soon it was shiny and done.

·         After drying for a couple days, I wet-sanded and polished it along with the body. It turned out so beautifully.

And now, my guitar is done and ready to be reassembled. After polishing, I did put the guitar back together. I put the tuners in (after drilling new holes for the screws – see pictures), put the pickguard on as well as the backplate, and attached the neck and bridge to the guitar. In the next articles, I will talk about installing the pickups and setting up the guitar (I intonated it myself!).

I finally have all the old paint off of the body and it has been primed. So I’m going to go through some step by step points to try to help you guys understand the project. I’ll start with the body and then go on to the headstock. I have also uploaded many new pictures to the pictures section. It is in the form of a slideshow video in order to save scrolling space. Anyway, back to the paint descriptions.

Body:

·         I first removed all the old paint. Now, it’s not necessary to do what I did. I scraped it down to the bare wood because I used a chemical paint stripper. The paint stripper made it fairly impossible to get all the paint to one level, unless I went to bare wood. If you are just going to use sandpaper, all you need to do is sand down until the entire layer of clear coat is gone. This ensures that your primer will have something to grip. You must be careful when using this method though because certain types of paint may react with others. So, the paint that the company used may be harmful to your finish. Though I know it is a pain, it is best to sand all the way down to the white layers beneath the paint. These are layers of sand sealer. If you use my route, you can go to Home Depot or Rona and pick up a can (or two) of Behr “The Stripper”. This is what I used and it worked wonderfully in removing the paint layers. I’m not sure what the active ingredient is in this stuff, but it reacts extremely well with heat. I found this out by accident, but it was a great accident to stumble upon. I had to spray outside because there would have been no ventilation in my basement. It was really sunny and hot this past week, so as I sprayed the paint stripper, I noticed that it seemed to be bubbling and turning the paint (all layers at once) into a flimsy papery substance. This was extremely easy to scrape off all at once and it left a relatively clean finish.

·         Once I got the paint off, I began sanding. By sanding the surface, you can smooth out any bumps as well as provide a surface suitable for painting. I began with coarse-grit sandpaper. You need to make sure you sand long enough and hard enough to remove any impurities left behind by the paint. I noticed that while sanding with the coarse-grit paper, I was removing green-coloured sawdust. Wood shouldn’t be green. Once it was a more wood-like colour, I went to the medium-grit; this smoothed the surface out even more. After a few rounds of medium-grit paper, I went to a fine-grit brick (we didn’t have any sheets of fine-grit left). Again, this smoothed out the surface and I was almost ready for my first round of primer. However, I was not completely done sanding yet (it takes quite a while). I then took fine-grit wet/dry sandpaper. This is different than regular wood sandpaper. It is made of aluminum oxide rather than the commonly used garnet-made sandpaper. This different material, along with its adhesive makes it waterproof. After soaking the sandpaper for 5-10 minutes, I began my final portion of sanding. The wet sanding removes oil from the surface and can help pick up some of the sawdust left behind by the other sandpapers. Using a dry rag, I quickly prepared the guitar for painting.

·         One last step before applying the primer was masking the electronics area. Using painter’s tape, I taped off the pickup holes, pot, switch, input jack, and bridge areas. This keeps the paint out of those areas. You want to ensure that you don’t get any paint in those areas. You wouldn’t want spray paint particles collecting themselves all over your pickups and wires.

·         Prime time! If you want to paint the entire body at once (as I do), take a metal clothes hanger, bending the end so that it can reach through the whole where the neck is screwed in. I hang my guitar from my clothes rack in my backyard. After spraying and letting it dry for a few minutes, I pick up the clothes hanger and move it to the shed and hang it there. This keeps stuff from flying into the paint (it’s windy and I have a tree that likes to shed) as well as protects it from the sun. The sun is your paint jobs worst nightmare!

And that’s as far as I’ve gotten so far using the body. Tomorrow, I will spray my base layer of red for the stripes. Sunday or Monday (likely Monday), I will begin adding the white layer. Once all the paint is done, I will be able to apply my clear coat and it will hopefully be done by the end of next week (in time for my band’s shows I hope).

Headstock:

·         So I’m currently on my third attempt at painting the headstock. For the first attempt, I used a paintbrush and this left brush marks that were very ugly. Second time, I mixed enamel paints with lacquers (without using primer) and it turned out horrible (there were runs and all sorts of bad stuff). Now, I have (hopefully) learned from my mistakes. I have a practice piece of wood to practice the design and make sure the paints work well together. I am also making sure I use the same type of paint for each layer!

·         To paint the headstock, like the body, you must sand it down until you reach bare wood. Jay Turser has an obsession with clear coat and shiny looking guitars. Unfortunately, they are poorly made guitars. Again, use the different levels of sandpaper to smooth out the surface and prepare it for painting.

·         Once it is sanded, it’s time to mask again. Use painter’s tape to mask off the sides of the headstock. Also be sure to mask off the part of the neck that touches the headstock. Paint on the neck is not good! To ensure that no paint gets on the neck, I took two pieces of newspaper and wrapped them around the neck, taping the paper to make sure it stays wrapped and securing it to the neck. Though it is tough to do, cut a piece of the tape to fit into the truss rod area.  I found some little cotton balls that fit perfectly into the tuner holes as well as the truss rod area. This isn’t necessary but it keeps things clean in those areas.

·         After it was sanded and masked, I applied two coats of primer. Though it is “fast-drying” primer, I made sure I waited a day or so to let it dry. Once I was certain it was all dry, I applied my first couple layers of red. I didn’t need to paint the whole headstock red since I am only going to have a stripe of it actually showing. After a day or so again, I masked the stripe and began painting black to get my thin black stripe below the red. Once that is dry, I will add another mask that covers that black stripe and then will begin my white layers. After white, clear coating will be the final step.

That’s where I stand and hopefully, it helps to understand the process I’ve taken to complete the project. Paint Part Two and Pickup blogs will be up as soon as I get to them. The pickups should be coming in within the next few days.

-- Mike

I have learned a lot over the last few days; things such as how not to paint a guitar, how to remove paints of different kinds and how many different kinds of paints there are, and how sharp putty knives really are.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve had my headstock sanded and ready to be painted for quite some time. So I started painting. I took a brush, some primer, and some paint and started on my way. It took 2 coats to realize that a brush was not going to work well. It left brush stroke patterns and textures that would definitely not look nice at all. Luckily, it was water based paint and it all came off fairly easily. So next day, I went to RONA to pick up some spray paint. IMPORTANT: know what types of paints you’re going to need before you go shopping. I purchased some red and some white enamel paint cans. So I went home and sprayed the base layer of white on. After reading up on some guitar painting tips, I realized I needed lacquer paints, not enamels. So off to Home Depot this time to pick up primer, red, white, and black lacquer paints and some paint stripper. After coming home and masking off my desired stripe area, I started to spray paint the new red lacquer paint on. IMPORTANT: do not mix different types of paints. When I took the mask off, the paint had bled underneath the mask. So I was forced to re-sand the guitar back to its bare-wood state. I went back to the Internet to find more painting help and I came across a great website: www.paintyourownguitar.com*. From here, I learned what I needed to do. So my headstock is currently sitting in my basement with its first coat of primer on and that’s the story of my headstock.

The next story I have to share is my guitar body story. I went out and got my body back because I decided I wanted to do the paint job. So what does it take to paint a guitar body? The first thing I knew I had to do was take off the paint layer that was already on the guitar. That’s what the paint stripper was for. I applied the paint stripper and began peeling away at the paint with a putty scraper. It has taken quite a bit of time and effort to get to the wood layer; however I know I have saved a lot of sanding time. I still have half of the paint to get rid of, but I am much farther now than I thought I’d be after one day. I am modelling my guitar after a Ron Fellows Custom PRS guitar and so I am very excited to see how well I can match the paint scheme.

LINK TO PICTURE

As I was scraping some of the paint off today, I accidentally stabbed myself with the putty knife. Though it is common sense (that I seemed to have forgotten for one stroke), make sure you always scrape away from your body and HANDS or any other body part that might be touching the guitar.

One last change in plans that I have decided on is a change of pickups. For one, I figured if I want to work in the electrical field, I probably shouldn’t buy a prewired pickup set. That just ruins the fun. I was also iffy on buying a set of EMGs because my other guitar already has them, though I have never heard EMG’s single coil pickups. Yes, I still recommend EMGs for any guitar; however I want to test out different pickup brands for this guitar. Instead, I chose Seymour Duncan pickups. I am purchasing an SH-6 Distortion humbucker for the bridge, an SSL-1 Vintage Staggered single-coil for the middle, and an SHR-1 Hot Rail Stacked single-coil pickup for the neck position. These pickups look pretty sweet.

I will be doing follow up entries about the painting process (with pictures), as well as the pickups and their installation as the processes take place. I will also have some new pictures up very shortly. It’s almost time!

-- Mike


*Note: www.paintyourownguitar.com does not tell you how to paint a guitar. He sells many books that help you along the way. If you, like me, are extremely broke and cannot buy the book at the time, sign up for his newsletter and read through the tips he gives. Many of these tips will help you as they have helped me.

I will no longer be making my own pickups for this guitar, although in the future, I would still like to make some of my own. Instead, I have decided to purchase an EMG 81/S/S combination set up (pending funds available). I have never heard or even seen an EMG single coil pickup, so I am very excited to see how it turns out. There are a few different sets I am looking at and the winner will probably depend on price (I am broke).

I have found an 81/SA/SA set, and two 81/S/S sets; one being a Kirk Hammett signature set. Once again, the one I choose will likely depend on the price. I plan to make my way to the local music store to see how much a new set will cost and then will compare that price with my options to see if I can bargain down and save myself some money.

(Click to view a list of EMG Strat Pickups)

I am very excited to get this guitar put back together with all the new tweaks. The guitar is out being painted and will hopefully be back in my possession soon. Tonight, I sanded down the headstock so that it could be painted as well. I no longer own a Jay Turser by name; very soon it will have a new “brand”. That brand will probably be named after the name of my summer band. I now also have a desired time of completion and so I will be working on a timeline now to have it completed by July 19th. My summer band has a show set up for that date and I will (hopefully) be sporting my customized new guitar.

I hope to have updates soon, along with pictures, of a new looking guitar. And hopefully I’ll find the money to purchase the new pickup set that I need for it. Wish me luck!

-- Mike