Hey friends, how is errybody? 

I’ve been working away behind the scenes for the past week doing odd little repair jobs and trying to resurrect a very poorly finished Telecaster from the very depths of hell. This poor guitar was one of my very first attempts at doing a painted top with natural back and sides, and in my eagerness to get it finished I rushed every step of the way. 

If you have been following the blog for a little while, you may have noticed how strongly I caution people to take time with every part of building or even simply refinishing a guitar (not saying that painting a guitar is simple btw). This guitar is the one that taught me that lesson. It in fact became such a hurdle at times that it had me questioning just what in the hell I was doing stepping away from the relative comfort of building cigar box guitars, and moving into full body electrics. 

This post is an extremely long read so it’s cool if you don’t get through it, but if you want to, hit the read more link that I’ve put just here. 

I hate to admit it but I had put this guitar body away a few months ago thinking to myself I would never touch it again, “it’s too much work”. Yet I kept it around, under a pile of guitar bodies I had cannibalised parts from and that were subject all sorts of abuse e.g. paint testers, as well as the too far gone to ever be repaired pile. Recently I had to move workshops and I considered throwing all of these bodies out, including the telecaster, maybe it was the hoarder in me but I just couldn’t trash them. 

What was so bad about this guitar in particular? Well, as I said, I was really eager to get the whole thing finished so I could put it together and play it, it was a big deal to me! I skipped steps, I didn’t even understand others so I completely ignored them and I also decided to try out a few methods that in my head I thought would work, that ultimately didn’t. Don’t get me wrong, experimentation and trying things out in your own way is something I highly encourage, innovation is born from it of course. On the flip side, you gotta be ready for anything to go wrong, not expect it to, just be ready. I suppose that was my first mistake, I wasn’t prepared for failure. Perhaps failure is too strong a word? At any rate and call it what you want, I wasn’t taking this learning curve in my stride. 

I had sanded the body and had started filling the grain, the first problem I had was that the grain filler I was using kept on being torn out every time I tried to sand it smooth again. I was a little frustrated as I was doing everything correctly, but I soon began to improvise and at one point had so much grain filler that the guitar body was covered so thick in the stuff that it looked like it was made of clay. In my head I thought, well if I can’t sand it without tearing it out, why not just build a layer so thick that you can’t even see the timber and just sand that flat?. Okay, I soon realised the error of that thinking and was forced to sand the mountain I had built right the way back down. I had decided that for the top of the guitar I would at the very least leave a skin thin layer with no natural timber exposed. It was after this that things started to go very wrong. 

So with a painted top and “natural” back and sides being my goal I had to decide what to do next? I wasn’t going to leave the back and sides completely natural, I wanted to stain them. So what to do first? Paint, or stain? *Side note - For those of you playing along at home, there was one crucial step in finishing that I had completely ignored, I’ll get to that later. I decided to stain first as my thinking was, whatever paint I end up using will be able to cover up any bleed, but getting stain off of paint might be an issue… I was going for an Arctic White top. I stained the sides and back and marvelled at my handiwork, it looked really lovely, the timber was coming to life and I let it settle in for a day. The next day I was faced with the challenge of how to paint the top without painting the sides as well? As the body had rounded edges and not 90 degree angles like a 62 re-issue, or any other guitar that has bound edges for that matter, I had to do my best to mask up the sides as straight as possible at the point I wanted the hard transition from paint to stain. Now, there is the right sorta tape for this job, and then there is everything else you shouldn’t touch, some people call it blue tape, some call it green tape, whatever colour it is in your part of the world, it’s painters tape and it clearly makes note that nothing bleeds through it and won’t leave residue on surfaces. What did I have at hand? Standard white paper masking tape… I thought no harm would come from using it, so I masked up the sides and covered the back with newspaper, fist thin I noticed while I was working my way through a bucket list of idiocy was that the stain was covering my hands, it was even getting rubbed onto the top at times. I noticed it, but I ignored the hell out it at the same time. 

The stain was oil based, the paint I was using was Acrylic (rattle cans) and I was not up to speed on how this would pan out. I didn’t even think it should ever be an issue, paint covers everything right? I left the top with a few smudgy but very light bits of stain before I started painting, as I didn’t want to have to sand it off and use the grain filler again, and again, paint covers everything right? You see where this is going?. My first pass of white was pretty thin as I knew the perils of over spraying, light passes and you will get no sag etc. So after the first pass I could see a bit of the stain still. No big deal. Second pass, still a little stain but I can also still see woodgrain so, that will right itself. Third and fourth, no woodgrain left to see but still a little bit of stain. I thought okay, I’m going to let this dry for two days before giving it a final two coats, dry paint should for some reason help in covering the stain when fresh coats are applied… Two days later, it looked as though, not only had the stain started to blur and lose definition, it had started to spread out, and I could see it bleeding up and over the sides onto the top as well now. I had a decision to make, keep spraying in the hopes it would mask the stain once and for all, or do the thing my gut was telling me to do and sand back the paint and start again. I went with sanding back and sweet jesus was it a pain, have you ever tried sanding tacky paint? It’s a shit job, the sandpaper can’t deal with it and it essentially rolls the paint into a goopy mess. I was determined to get it done though. Paint off, sanded back as much of the stain out of the timber on the top as I though was necessary and I started again. Seriously, there was just one tiny little patch here and there that you could see the stain, it had set so deep that I would be gouging the body to try and sand it out. Start painting white again. Sure, why not?

White, white paint and mahogany stain. Never again, well not in the way I was trying. Who guessed that the stain kept on coming back? 10 points to Gryffindor. Feeling close to the end of my rope I decided, well lets just forget the whole white thing and move to a darker colour. I was feeling pretty defeated and annoyed at myself. I chose a Fiesta Red type colour and was left to make my next move. After previously spending an entire day trying to remove the tacky paint, I decided just to wet sand a few layers off. I hadn’t built up much anyways before deciding on changing the colour. Now remember me talking about oil based stain and acrylic paint? Well the red I had bought without me knowing it was actually an Enamel based paint, probably much better to use with the stain, but not so cool to use over acrylic.

I started spraying with reckless abandon and even after one pass I could not see the stain seeping through. Success! I kept at it for a couple of days building up more coats, letting them get touch dry in between and honestly lost track of how many coats I ended up applying. Let’s go with, a lot.

Once the final colour coat was on and touch dry it was time to take the masking tape off the sides as do some clear coats. Hey, the masking tape did it’s job oddly enough, there was no paint bleed and the lines were sharp! The residue however and the stain that was left looking rather patchy when I peeled it off was pretty god awful. I ended up having to wet sand the sides and touch up the stain, all with the top being only touch dry mind you so I couldn’t really get a grip on the body. Sure, I could have waited ages to fix this up but, I wanted it done now. So after getting that done, the clear coats were ready to happen. I’d already invested in some acrylic clear and as I was still blind to the fact that the red was enamel, and I thought that it wouldn’t matter that the stain would still probably seep through the back and sides of the acrylic because it was just a clear coat, I was getting ready to by a one way ticket to crazy town. i don’t know, maybe the stain had had enough time to set but it didn’t bleed through, the clear coats seemingly were going perfectly and soon enough I was posting stuff up here about the guitar being close to finished.

I left it alone for about a week and a half before growing impatient. I wanted this thing ready to play. I knew the paint and top coat was probably still a little tacky but felt that wet sanding a bit to get it super smooth would expedite the curing process. Somehow? Shit man, my logic… What logic?

I was happily wet sanding away and getting rid of the “orange peel effect” being very careful not to dent the paint and whatnot. Having to be so careful should have probably been my first warning sign. For the specific purpose of sanding and buffing etc I had bought a non slip mat to lay the guitar on, so I lay it down and had been working on the top for about an hour before the next problem crept up. As I peeled the guitar off the mat, wait what, peeled? Yes peeled, I realised I had yet again goofed. With the finish still being tacky, it had stuck itself to the mat. None of the finish itself came off, no, it was the mat that had stuck parts of itself to the body. Okay, time to take a breather I thought, give myself some space, let the paint dry out more, then figure out how to deal with the material on the back of the guitar. I came back to it a week later ready for anything, most things, well I was ready to try and keep a level head at any rate. After inspecting the back, I saw that I could ‘simply’ wet sand it and it would actually be okay. I had decided it was also time to finish sanding the rest of the body so I got about that, careful not to use the mat I had bought to rest it upon.

It went okay for a while, everything was getting nice and smooth, I was loving the contrast between the red and the timber. Little did I know, I was soon to reach the tipping point. 

Wet sanding, is a delicate job, you don’t have to apply much pressure, and you let the sandpaper take care of things. I felt I was doing that, I had prepped the paper by soaking it with a small amount of detergent, and had been doing things ever so carefully. I’m not sure why I didn’t pay attention to the part where I was seeing RED in the water and not just clear coat. I’d made the giant mistake of cutting right through small parts of the top coat, and before I knew it, in a bid to level everything out again, I’d cut right through parts of the red colour coat, and oh hey there’s that white coat I left on, nice to see you again. Have you ever seen a grown man walk into a spider web and just, freak out? I was throwing my arms around kinda like that. Time to compose yourself, you have come this far, just take it one step at a time, I told myself. One of the things about blindly adding layer of paint on top of previous layers, over and over is that you end up with some pretty noticeable valleys if you sand right through parts of that paint. There was no way I was going to have a level surface if I just started spot painting colour coats again, so what did I do? I got out the wood filler and tried to level it out. Apply, let dry, sand smooth. 

Okay, so I masked up what I needed to again and began touching up the red, and then making more passes ALL OVER with top coat. Things weren’t perfectly level but by now I was just ready to ignore the issue. I let it dry out for another week, and by this time had I just left it initially to be - without touching it, it would have been ready to go. So yeah, I left it for a week and began to sand again and didn’t cut through the top coat. It was sanded and smooth and there were a few little valleys but not really noticeable, so I began to get all the things together I would need to cut and polish it to a high gloss. 

I was doing this by hand and wanted to be as careful as possible, I was aware from previous experience that heat and fresh paint do not make the best of friend. Heat would come from the buffing process. I started with the back this time and had a pretty good finish going, of course there would be more buffing needed but I was getting good light reflection from it. Forgoing the sides for a while I went to the top and began to cut and polish it out. I think this is where all of my past errors really came back to haunt me. There was so much paint on this thing, with so many different chemical makeups that it was just never going to really cure and I found this out rather quickly. The back of the guitar was fine because it only had satin and clear coats, it was pretty thin and had dried out successfully. The top however only took about 5 minutes of buffing before the paint started to essentially melt. I saw it happening and I couldn’t stop myself, first I saw the gloss starting to disappear, then I saw the colour coat start to look somehow wet again, then it started to pill and then it became a giant gooey mess and then the white started to come through again and then… And then I decided I was beaten. 

I couldn’t take anymore. I just stood there and let out a sigh, I had nothing left in me to give to this guitar. I walked away, and didn’t return to the workshop for about three days. It might sound dramatic, but I was and very much still am proud of the instruments I make. I take pride in all of them and I love doing it. This however left me feeling embarrassed and frustrated, and angry and it was really simply the exact opposite of everything I strive for. I felt shame you know? I knew I had to face the fact that I had ruined something that could have been so beautiful if it weren’t for the fact that I was so foolish in my approach. It actually took me about a week to take the guitar off the workbench and start busying myself with something else. As I put it away I was even more embarrassed feeling than before. Something I had been working so hard on and that I had taken pictures of and posted online progress reports on, was just never going to be finished.

Slowly, after allowing myself to accept it, I began to recognise that there was a lesson or two in it, and slowly they began to show themselves as not something to be ashamed of. Everyone makes mistakes, everyone has to learn somehow and not everyone is going to have someone guiding them each step of the way. I had chosen to do something and do it in the way I thought best at the time, and it didn’t work out. Hey, shit happens right. It was from then on that I began to take measured approaches to each instrument I was dealing with. Be it a soldering job, or reaming holes for replacement machine heads, anything and everything I began to work on, was done in measured steps, always after seeking out advice if I didn’t understand something. Not always taking the advice, but not only being ruled by my own assumptions. 

So where is this guitar body now?

Well, it’s on my workbench again. 

I’ve stripped the whole thing down to bare timber and it was a long process. Hell the paint still turned to glue when I was sanding it, and if that wasn’t a nice little reminder to remember what I’ve learnt, I don’t know what is? I’m bringing this guitar back to life, it’s sanded, and this time sealed (which was a crucial step I had missed in the past). When it’s finished I’m not selling it, I’m keeping it and I’m very much looking forward to playing it for years to come.