Simon B's ES-3 build

[Ghaynas]

That place's cool too, I feel the GAS, I feel it so strong! hahahaha

[Simon Barden]

Right. the weather warmed up and it's eventually stopped raining long enough to work outside again. But I almost wished I hadn't.

Over the past 8 months the guitar body has been inside sitting next to a warm radiator. I'm not sure if it was that that caused the problem or some reaction of the paint, but when I had a close look at it as I started to finish off scraping the binding, I found that it had reliced itself. All the paint (except the very thin centre sections that were just the clear amber over the yellow stain) had creased up forming ridges along the grain lines. At first I thought it was simply cracking, which I could live with, but a closer inspection showed the lines to be ridges.

I'd been hand-painting round the edges in an attempt to tidy up all my binding scraping errors, and needed to sand some of this down to see where I was, but as I sanded, the high ridges got sanded off and exposed the yellow underneath. So I then sanded some more of the body to see what had happened and ended up giving it all a wet sand, leaving loads of very visible lines.

Here's the top:


The upper shoulder where youi can see that even the sides went all ridged:


Around the upper F-hole:


And the back:


For comparison here's the top after re-spraying last year when I thought it was looking fantastic.


I'm really not sure what to do now. I can't leave it as it is but the top won't take another sanding down without going through the veneer. I'm finding it hard to get any motivation to do anything at all to it. If I sand it all down again then it's going to have to be finished in a solid colour, and I don't really want a solid-coloured guitar.

I'm really tempted to just throw it away.

[phrozin]

thats a bummer Simon it was looking great, looks to me either a reaction between the stain and the clear with a fair bit of shrink back what did you use for grain filler ? going to be a prick to get it right if it was me id get hair dryer and razor blade to take the old stuff off with out using a lot off sanding and go again (i said use hair dryer as its not as hot as a heat gun) bit of a bummer but its quite fixable. your pretty clued up Simon its a to good of a kit to toss out


if there is someone who could fix it, its you

[Drummerdude]

Man Simon I hate to see that. That burst was spot on .. I have no experience but could you grain fill over the cracked finish with something and lightly sand back flat and reapply the color. Again I have no clue just thinking out loud. Or you could go for an aged relic type look because the color is still awesome. Anyways good luck and phrozin is right if anyone can fix it you can..

[FrankenWashie]

Dang dude, that sucks. Can you just lightly ghost some colour back over the top?

edit I just blew those photos up, that really has affected the entire surface hasn't it?

[JB RETRO]

Geez Simon, what a shame, that burst you have done is awesome. I think Phrozin could be onto some thing with his method. Don't toss it you'll come up with a fix

[Zandit75]

That's such a shame Simon. I initially thought they were two completely different guitars.

[stan]

Sad to see mate, it was looking great.
What about a weak solvent on a wadded cloth? Rubbing from the centre outwards?
A few things may happen:
it softens the main colors enough to reapply them
It blends in the blemishes to make them less noticeable , either fixing it or facilitating touch ups
It removes what you have enough to do it again...

You could mist over a darker red/brown hopefully blending it in more...

If you are at the point you feel like giving up, then why not experiment and either learn from it or hopefully fix it the way you want?You have helped a lot of people here mate, time to put that brain to work - you can fix this

[FrankenWashie]

Sad to see mate, it was looking great.
What about a weak solvent on a wadded cloth? Rubbing from the centre outwards?
A few things may happen:
it softens the main colors enough to reapply them
It blends in the blemishes to make them less noticeable , either fixing it or facilitating touch ups
It removes what you have enough to do it again...

You could mist over a darker red/brown hopefully blending it in more...

If you are at the point you feel like giving up, then why not experiment and either learn from it or hopefully fix it the way you want?You have helped a lot of people here mate, time to put that brain to work - you can fix this

That might be a good option Stan, Ceridwen ain out one for the databank

[Simon Barden]

Thanks chaps for your kind words and support. I needed that.

The finish didn't 'crack' or pull back, but was raised into small ridges - think like geological strata where the ground had been pushed up into a hill by pressure from either side. When I gave the ridges a light sand, it was like cutting the top of the hill off and exposing the underlying strata, but in this case it was the underlying colour which must have also been pushed up.

I'll give the solvent idea a go first (though probably more to remove the top colours to reveal the yellow than to try and re-blend the colours). If that doesn't work or is going to take for ever, then I'll try the heat+scrape method and see where I get. I can always spray the sides a dark tobacco colour again, but the 'burst will need to be re-done completely as I think misting over the existing finish won't hide the yellow grain lines in the red and brown areas. They might become darker but so will the top colours.