Yet More Clear Coat

After waiting a day for the lacquer to harden, I lightly sanded the guitar with my small sanding block and 400 grit paper. This was just to knock the peaks off the paint and make it more level for the next round of paint. When this was done I wiped the guitar down and sprayed several more coats throughout the day.

The guitar after the first coat of lacquer

The back of the guitar showing how the handle was attached

Light sanding between coat

I repeated this process for four days. I wanted to get as much lacquer on the body as possible so I would not rub through the paint during polishing.

On the last day I was getting a little brave and laid the paint on a little thick. This caused a run near the cord jack cavity.

The paint run

Now that the guitar was covered in nearly three entire cans of lacquer, it was time to hang it up and forget about it for a month. After that time I could begin dealing with the run and start the polishing.

The guitar was hung to fully cure

Clear Coat

I did some minor touch-up to the paint job before applying my clear lacquer. There were areas on the front of the guitar that were blemished or where sloppy masking showed wood around the binding. I used a 000 brush and some green model paint to touch up these areas. It was not an exact match but close enough.

Model paint used for touch-up

A small brush was used to apply the paint

I knew I would be applying a lot of paint over the whole body. Rather than be forced to take long pauses while my air compressor recharged, I decided to use spay cans. I'm sure the Behlen Stringed Instrument Lacquer was really nice but it was $13.00. I chose to use Rust-Oleum Specialty clear lacquer for less than $4.00 per can. Not only was it substantially cheaper, it was readily available.

I quickly found that holding the trigger down on a spray can would make my finger tired. I added a spray grip to the can. This was a pistol grip with a trigger that fastened to the top of the spray can and made the can much more comfortable to hold. It got my finger tip away from the nozzle and gave me better control of the spray.

The spray grip attached to the can

I sprayed several light coats and then hung the guitar to dry for about an hour. I repeated this process a couple more times and let the guitar dry over night. 

The guitar dried overnight with the laundry

Choosing a Stain

The front of the guitar was to be seafoam, or in my case, green. All the other surfaces were to be stained - or maybe not. It was possible that merely applying lacquer would darken the wood enough to be close to the color of the Gibson.

I found a piece of mahogany scrap lumber that was close to the same color as the mahogany used in the guitar kit. On this I brushed a few coats of lacquer. The color of the wood looked close to the results I wanted. I knew better than to trust that the wood on the guitar would behave the same way. I used a small brush to paint part of the inside of the control bay. This did not darken the wood like it had on the scrap lumber.

Testing the lacquer.

I pillaged my father's stain collection and sampled several on un-lacquered areas of the control bay. Like trying to conjure up just the right seafoam dye mix, this was a bit of a crap shoot. Just because the stain in the can was a good match, I had to actually put it on the wood to see the final result. The winner was ZAR Fruitwood.

Stain tests in the control bay

This seemed like a good match

I masked the binding and trusted myself to keep it off all the green parts. I applied two coats to the back and sides to ensure even coverage. The result was a little darker than I had expected from the test. Still, it looked pretty good. It was nice to get a glimpse of how the body would look when finished.

Masking the binding

The stained body

As before, there was some bleeding of the stain onto the binding. This was just as easy to clean up. I taped the same razor blade into the cardboard and scraped all around the guitar.

Scraping the binding

After a few days of drying, I would be able to start spraying the clear coat.

A glimpse at the finished finish 

Paint Cleanup

The 3M green tape on the binding was good, but not perfect. Or maybe the tape was perfect but I did not mask well. In either case there was paint bleeding in some areas. Cleanup was easy. It might have been the first task in the project that had gone as planned.

I folded a piece of cardboard around a razor blade so the blade stuck out to the width of the binding. I then taped the blade in place. Using the cardboard as a guide, I scraped the blade along the binding. This worked perfectly. I moved the blade around the guitar until all the errant paint was removed.

A razor blade was used to clean the binding.

The 3M tape did its job but it did leave some residue. I used denatured alcohol and quite a bit of elbow grease to remove it.

Tape goop left after masking.

Lastly, some of the debris in the paint was not removed with the sandpaper I used previously. I used an X-acto blade to scrape these off.

Debris being removed with a knife blade.

Spraying Lacquer

I added a handle to the guitar body as a way to manipulate it while painting. The neck for the guitar was bolt-on so I drove screws through the holes for the neck into the board. I drilled a hole at the other end and fashioned a hook from a wire coat hanger so that I could hang the guitar while it dried.

I wiped down the guitar and got the compressor ready for use. I had contemplated setting up a spray booth by hanging plastic from the rafters in my garage but decided just to spray while standing on my front lawn. At least the paint and the grass were similar colors.

I rigged the compressor with a long quick-release hose and a paint sprayer. I filled the jar with my dyed lacquer and did some practice sprays on the sample board I had used earlier to test the dye.

Many years ago my father built my air compressor for use with my airbrush. It was made of a very old refrigerator pump plumbed to an air tank. This all sat on a wheeled base with a frame to support the tank. It used a shaft of one-and-a-half inch pipe for a handle to move the compressor. The handle could be unscrewed and removed to save space.

It was a great machine for my other hobbies as it was an oiled pump that was very quiet. I could paint at 2:00 a.m. without rattling the windows in my neighbors house every time the pump turned on. The downside was that it was slow to create pressure. This had never been an issue in the past as it was only used for inflating car tires and running a Paasche airbrush.

This slow pressurization meant I could not spray for more than about a minute at a time. This might seem like enough time to color the front of the guitar, but I had also made my color so dilute that it was taking a great many passes to build it up. When the pressure dropped too low I would hang up the paint gun and the guitar and wait for the compressor to replenish the tank. This might take five minutes or more.

During one of the breaks I took the opportunity to add more dye to my lacquer mixture. While I did not mind applying many layers to build up the color, I also did not want to put on so much paint that I might cause runs or other problems.

Dust got trapped in the paint.

At this time I noticed that even thought I had wiped the guitar down before painting, I must not have done a good job, or perhaps it got contaminated another way. The paint had hundreds of little boogers stuck in it. This was not very concerning as I was sure I could lightly rub a piece of sandpaper over them to knock them off, and what remained I could pick off with my X-acto.

Remember that long pipe handle I described earlier? When I was taking the guitar out to the yard for another round of paint, I walked around the compressor but neglected to take into account the long metal stick jutting out of its front. I smacked the guitar into the end of the handle and left a one inch dent on the face. I stared at the damage in disbelief for a few seconds and went back to painting.

Bonk! The dent caused by banging the guitar into the air compressor.

I repeated the spray-recharge process a half dozen times until I thought the guitar was sufficiently green. The tiger stripes seemed to be blending well with the green overspray but I was ending up with a look quite different from the Gibson I was trying to imitate. It was not a seafoam guitar, but a green one.

Painting completed.

The dent in the guitar turned out to be where it would get covered up by the pick guard. This was fortunate. It also become less noticeable as I added more paint. Later still I would cover the whole body in great seas of clear lacquer so hopefully it would become even less obvious.

After letting the guitar hang in the garage for a couple of hours the lacquer was dry enough to handle. I used a small piece of sand paper to remove all the dust embedded into the paint. Using almost no pressure I sanded until most all of the specks were gone.

Sand paper was used to to gently remove the dust in the paint.

Mixing Paint

Lacquer paint seemed a bit hard to find. The local home supply store Home Depot had one item in stock. This was Deft Brushing Lacquer. I didn't know if I could blow brushing lacquer though a paint gun, and in fact the label specifically said it must not be sprayed. I found this video on YouTube that specifically addressed this.

The only non-spray can lacquer I could find at the
 local hardware store was brushing lacquer.

I followed the author's instructions as accurately as I could. I marked a glass jar with the expected level of each chemical. I measured the equivalent amount of water and then poured it into the jar. I marked each level with a Sharpie.

The jar marked up for mixing.

I dried the jar and added added the chemicals. I was not sure what acetone would to do the plastic lid so I covered the opening with aluminum foil before screwing on the lid.

The chemical mix with an aluminum barrier
to protect the plastic lid.

I mixed my dye and added a conservative amount to my spray lacquer. I didn't want to put the color on too thick as I figured it would be best to built it up in layers.

The dye mixed for addition to the lacquer.

Prep for Paint

I wanted to spray a tinted clear coat over the face to the guitar. I masked the sides as I had before and used a pizza box to make a cardboard mask for the back of the body.

I didn't know how permanent the tinted lacquer would be if it got on the plastic binding so I cut thin strips of the 3M green tape to mask the front edge of the binding. The green tape was very flexible at that width and clung well to the thin edge.

The binding edge masked.

The mask for the back of the body was cut from a pizza box.

With test fitting I found that the neck was a very snug fit. I did not want to make the fit any tighter by adding paint so I masked the slot for it. I also masked the cavities for the pickups.

The body masked and ready for paint.

Off to See the Gibson

The images online of the Seafoam Gibson Les Paul varied dramatically in color. I'm sure the guitars varied some amount, and there was a lot of variance in the photography. Also, heavy-handed digital processing of the images surely had a huge effect on the colors.

A friend and I decided to go to Guitar Center to look around. I wanted to see if I could catch a Seafoam Les Paul in the wild. They had one in stock so I took a few photos. The seafoam was greener than most of the photos I had found online. The back was a darker wood than many images I had found. The colors on the Gibson website was pretty accurate for this model.

Sanding the Dye

After the dye had dried, I began sanding to hopefully get a subtle tiger stripe effect and to minimize the problem of the dye not penetrating. At first I was careful to lightly sand in the direction of the grain using 400 grit paper. I quickly discovered that wood is a lot tougher than styrene plastic, with which I am used to working.

Before sanding and after - the top has been sanded and the
bottom has not. 

I started using more course paper, more pressure and sanding across the grain to see any results. After quite a bit of sanding the raw wood started to come through. The whole time I winced at the idea that base wood would start to poke through.

Extra sanding was applied to the areas that did
not take the dye well with dubious results.

The blotches where there was no dye remained. I did quite a bit more sanding to try to lessen them with some success but they were still obvious. Perhaps they would fade even more under the tinted clear coat.

Sanding complete.

I could already see that the paining scheme was starting to deviate from my plan. The dye was more pronounced than I had anticipated and it was clear that I was not going to achieve the subtle seafoam look of the Gibson Les Paul. Being completely inexperienced I was not delusional about my chances of getting it right on the first try, but it was about this time I started to think of this project as a prototype with a second attempt after this one.

Dying

I mixed my dye solution and applied it to the guitar body with a folded paper towel. The wood sucked up the dye rapidly. I wondered if I should not have diluted the color with more water than I did. I figured most of the dye would be sanded off.

The guitar body with dye applied. While it looks very blue,
 it became more green after it was fully dry.

I immediately noticed a big problem. The veneer was repelling the dye in many areas near the binding at the edge of the body and in a thin stripe where the two pieces of veneer met in the middle of the body. This was the first time I thought there was a problem that I would be be able to fix. I had planned to sand the veneer down to achieve subtle grain popping pattern and then spray a tinted clear coat over the top. I might be able to sand enough to hide the areas where the dye did not penetrate.

The splice between to two halves of the maple veneer.

Areas along the edge of the body seemed to be contaminated
with glue and repelled the dye.

The worst example of the dye not penetrating.

If there were signs on the raw guitar that the dye would not take in these areas, I completely missed them. Perhaps glue got on the surface and was wiped off, or maybe too much was used and it soaked through the paper thin veneer. I couldn't know for sure but paying $28 extra for the veneer only to have it be so marred was disappointing.

Preparation for Dying

I'm tempted to make a joke about being sure my will is up to date, but I won't.

Realizing how incredibly thin the maple veneer was, I was reluctant to sand it before I applied dye to the guitar. I knew I was going to be sanding after applying the dye to create the grain popping effect, and I feared sanding through. I did end up lightly sanding along the grain with 400 grit using a small sanding block.

The ragged edge at the neck and cutaway.

I also gave the ragged edge of the cutaway some attention. I used the sanding block to even up the edge. The guitar body tapered right at the and of the cutaway but the binding remained straight. Because of this the binding gradually rose away from the surface. I scraped the binding with a No. 11 X-acto blade until it and the guitar were even.

Sanding the cutaway edge.

Scraping the binding to make it even with the body.

I wiped down the guitar with denatured alcohol to remove dust and fingerprints. I then masked off everything but the face of the body. I used 3M green tape for concrete. It was really sticky and holds a tight edge. I did not want the dye to get past the binding onto the sides. I was all ready to apply the dye.

3M green tape

The sides of the guitar masked.

Matching Colors

I found many articles and videos showing how to dye a guitar. None of them was attempting the same sort of finish I was looking for. I assumed that the Seafoam Gibson used some amount of grain-popping. Someone online said he was quite sure the color was mixed into a clear coat and just sprayed on without dying the wood. I was so committed to the grain popping technique that I ignored this advice. Amazing how the brain works.

The blue and yellow dyes prepared and ready to mix

I bought powder blue and yellow dyes from Luthiers Mercantile International. These were much cheaper than the pre-mixed bottled dyes found elsewhere. I made solutions of yellow and blue making sure I had more than enough to do all of my experimentation and to finish the guitar. I experimented with various ratios on a piece of plywood with a maple veneer. I improvised a pipette dropper by marking a drinking straw with a Sharpie. By capping the end of the straw with my finger I could get a similar amount of liquid each time I dipped the straw.

My green mixture. Notice the laboratory quality tube dropper.

The sample board. 

Finding the right color was tricky because the color of the wood would greatly affect to final color of the dye. Additionally, the wood I was using for tests was a bit darker than the veneer on the guitar body. I  made several samples on a piece of plywood with a maple laminate, and then tried it on a maple board. I sprayed the sample with lacquer. This made the results darker still.

A maple board dyed and with lacquer on the upper half. 

In the end my color choice was really more of a guess. I realized that matching the exact color of the Gibson would require not only knowing what technique was used but having an identical piece of wood to the kit body to experiment on. After several weeks of research and head-scratching (mostly head-scratching) I was ready to take my chances.