3/4 ST-1JR First Build

[HereIsJT]

A solid day on the sandpaper today to get the primer laid out. More great lessons learned:

a) There's actually a fair amount of time that you need to invest in making some basic tooling on your first build... Today's tool was the painting handle for the body. This is iteration 1 - I'll likely redo it with some 1 inch dowel or something that I can put in a jig down the line, but getting dimensions right to give me a bit of edge-over in the neck pocket for spraying and looking at a minimum impact, full back exposure design... photo's below. Basically a handle onto a block (roughly the size of the neck plate, and some studs that slide into the screw holes, then you can just punch a single screw into the middle of it all)
b) When you're proud as punch of the sanding you've done and you've got a silky glass-like finish with 220 grit sandpaper, you're probably only half way there
c) the first hit of primer will very quickly expose all the sins of the world!

For info, I did a full large can of the Septone primer filler from Supercheap Auto - 1 medium coat sanded back (220), then 3 fine coats ready to just lightly knock back (360 grit) and lay down the undercoat colour.

I thought I'd done a stellar job with the sanding, but the primer quickly disproved that theory. I'd always planned to prime and sand and re-prime, but I was surprised at how much grain stood up and invisible marks jumped out once that primer hit.

Anyways, here's some images:

These are just the rough handle... a bit of tite bond and 2 screws to hold it all together


Post primer and sand down, still shows some good low spots in the original sanding. Lighting detail on the headstock is masked off now - the face of the headstock will be the same as the guitar, with a natural lightning bolt per the customer's request (that would be my childrren)



That blue on the handle was a bit of a test spray to see how all the layers come together - that's roughly the final colour. It's a Lamborghini colour called Blu Cepheus which has a metric butt-load of blue pearl over a blue undercoat.

[HereIsJT]

Now I'm all primed up and ready to knock back with 360 grit and lay down the DupiColor Deep Aqua undercoat before I do the Colour Spec (0105) Lambo pearl



(they are bamboo skewer offcuts keeping paint out of my string-through holes)

[JohnH]

This is looking great!

[GreyFloyd]

Also made a 3/4 Strat earlier this year trying to get the grandees interested. They love the colour but only one of the four has actually picked it up. Good luck with your project.

[HereIsJT]

Thanks GreyFloyd, I've been getting them involved with the build along the way to try and build a bit more of a connection. They were proudly showing off the work so far to their cousins last night, so it seems to be heading in the right direction!

[HereIsJT]

So I've just sprayed the back of the neck and headstock with Cabothane clear satin, which has a 2 hour touch dry and 6 hour re-coat, so I have time to burn.

More updates on progress. The colour went on, but not without it's challenges. I've gone for a 3 stage pearl to land at the Lamborghini Huracan Blu Cepheus colour. The stages are Blue Undercoat (Duplicolor Deep Aqua), ColorSpec pearl (PPG 0105) and ColorSpec clear coat.

Anyhoo, second coat with the Duplicolor Deep Aqua can and the nozzle spat its little red spray control and spewed big blobs of blue all over my smooth first coat . So I let that set off for a day and cut it all back to start again with a new can.

It did inspire me for another paint job down the line though. It's not really relic, but looks super cool.



Got all that sanded out and went again the next night. This time I got my undercoat down nicely and I now had a blue guitar and headstock face.



Lesson for young players at this stage. Preparation, patience and cleanliness are your friends. I decided at this stage I'd drop the pearl over the natural timber lightning bolt too. My experiments showed it should throw the colour back to a birch-like white and pop some blue pearl in the right light. Much excitement to peel back the masking!

[HereIsJT]

I let the blue undercoat set off for about an hour and came back and hit it with a pot scourer to key up the surface to get the pearl and clear coat on. The scourer (heavy duty) did a great job to dull down the surface nicely.

I've laid down 3 layers of pearl and the white in the pearl coat has pulled back the deep aqua colour to a candy sky blue with a nice pearl hint in it at this stage. It's about 29 degrees in Brisbane at the moment, so I was able to get layers on every 15 minutes.

Onto the clear coat and OMG!!! The clear coat has pulled up the pearl and the white tones even more. It's this crazy light blue with a never ending depth. I see now why people fuss over the Blu Cepheus colour on the Lambos, it's AMAZING! I could stare into it all night!



Just with the raw clear coat on it's throwing all kinds of sparkle. I managed to get a dusting coat, 3 medium coats and a wet coat out of the big can of ColorSpec Clear Coat.



And laying the neck over the jig gives me a great look at where it's going to land:



So now it's a matter of waiting out a week to let the clear coat really set off, then level back and polish, polish, polish!

[Simon Barden]

I'd certainly wait longer than a week as it really won't be that hard. Two weeks minimum, but it won't be anything like near cured within a month. Quite a few build thread posts recently about finishes that mark after polishing and scratchplates pushing up ridges in finishes etc.

You have the contradiction that warmer temperatures aren't best for spraying, even though things seem to dry fast, as the outer layer of the spray hardens so quickly that it traps solvent underneath it, which takes a long time to gas-off. Repeat that several times in a day and you could have quite a lot of trapped solvent under the finish. It may seem dry and hard, but it's probably not and it can mark very easily. It's why spray car shops mainly use 2k poly rather than 1k, as the catalyst (nasty as it is) gets the finish cured in a few hours rather than the months it would take for 1k to achieve the same hardness.

I know I'm certainly going to leave a lot longer between coats in future to allow each coat to dry more thoroughly before the next one is applied.

[HereIsJT]

Thanks Simon I'll heed that advice. Maybe I'll be waiting for the xmas break to cut it back and polish then

[HereIsJT]

I had seen the advice to wait until it stops stinking to know it's good to go too.