It's OK to f*** things up when you are a beginner

[saetron]

Hello fellas, I am new to this.. And as you imagined I messed up the paint on my guitar, I wanted to do a green flake but the base colour dripped at a couple of places.. The question is do I sand the spots and redo them or do I sand the whole guitar and respray?

[JimC]

Well, look at it this way, everything is practice. So why not try fixing it up, but if you aren't 100%satisfied with the results, cut the whole lot back. There's what sounds like (i haven't tried it) a very interesting technique described hereabouts for using water soluble filler around a run so you can sand more accurately.
There's another thing I'd add from experience with boatbuilding. People always feel they have to go right back to bare wood, but the paint manufacturers don't advise it in general. They suggest just sanding back to good paint.
So if you sand back give it no more sanding than you need to go flat.
Having said all that, it rarely does any harm to get an extra coat on, just don't sand back to excess. Is it much more work to do a whole coat than patch?

[saetron]

Thanks a lot for the reply I will try not to haste things up this time and do it right.. I will do it from the beginning.

[Simon Barden]

Hi and welcome. And yes, it's OK. Painful, but you do learn from the errors and we've all made them (and keep making them).

It's hard to tell what's best without seeing any photos. If its a solid colour with some runs, then wait a couple of days for the paint to harden before removing the drip and sanding down in those areas. Thicker paint takes longer to dry, so do wait or you can pull off more depth than you want when sanding.

If you've got any single-edged razor-blades, then first get one and burr the edge over on a piece of iron or steel, then put a bit of adhesive tape over the two ends of the blade, so that 1/3 remains exposed. The tape raises the edge up off the surface, so if you then pass the blade over the drip area, with the burr facing the direction of scraping, you can scrape almost all the raised area off without affecting the surrounding paintwork.

Then once the blade isn't removing any more paint, you can strip-sand the remains of the drip. Cut some long 1-1.5cm wide strips of fineish sandpaper (say 240 grit), place over the drip area, put a finger on the spot to hold the sandpaper down, then pull the sandpaper out with your other hand so that you pull the length of the strip through under the finger. That way you only sand that area, not the rest.

As you are adding more coats over this later, it doesn't matter if the surface isn't glossy. In fact it's probably best if the whole surface is lightly sanded down to help get a flat finish (without sanding through to any primer layers or the bare wood).

[saetron]

I think I'm gonna do the whole thing again cause I think I didn't sand the primer enough and it gave some imperfections.. Thanks a lot for your replies I much appreciate it your time and effort

[Simon Barden]

I'd just sand what you have flat, and then spray over the top of that. Getting the surface as flat as possible is really important to a good finish.

[saetron]

[saetron]

So that's what I did...What do you think I should do?

[Andy40]

I'd just sand what you have flat, and then spray over the top of that. Getting the surface as flat as possible is really important to a good finish.

I agree with Simon. I'd wet sand with 600 then respray

[saetron]

If you noticed at the bottom of the second picture, I got something that looks like wood texture.. As if I painted with my base color directly on the veneer but I used primer and wetsanded it with 600 first.. Do you think that 6 coats of 1k clear coat is enough to cover those flakes?