A Problem Solved

As I dicussed in my previous blog post, some years ago I placed recently sprayed guitar bodies in new guitar cases before all the solvent in the lacquer had found its way out of the finish, proof of which was that dye from the case padding was activated and penetrated the lacquer over time, leaving a black shadow where it had been in contact with the soundboards.

After weighing up the advice kindly offered in response to that post by a couple of Facebook friends, I decided to strip the finish from the bodies entirely, effectively taking me back to square one in the finishing process. While acetone softened the finish to the extent that it was at least sticky and could be removed with difficulty using steel wool or a single edged razor, it was a painfully slow process, and I concluded that removing all of the lacquer in this way was far too onerous a task. The alternative was to apply regular paint stripper which proved very effective in softening the lacquer, allowing it to be easily scraped off. I've been careful to remove all vestiges of the stripper using generous quantities of denatured alcohol, and I'm ready - once again - to pore fill in readiness for spraying.

As I began work on these guitars up to twelve years ago, you'll no doubt appreciate how keen I am to complete them and resume work on other instruments I've commenced more recently.

Cheers

Pete