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Double Bass Best way to strip paint?

MollyKay

MollyKay

Supporting Member
Sep 10, 2006
806
222
Southern PA
www.bassmonkey.net
Disclosures
Bass Hobby'ist
#1
I have just purchased the most butt ugly American Standard bass that needs paint removed from it. This poor bass has been painted ivory and then faux finished with a brown sepia woodgrain. My fear is the paint is hiding repair sins, but I want to find out anyway.

What is the best, most safe way to remove this paint. Once I find out what is underneath (hopefully the orginal redish/brown fininsh) what is the best type of new finish to apply. I know :rolleyes: ...same as before this is a 70 year old plywood bass, who cares, but I really like these classic American plywood basses. They deserve to be brought back into playing condition and enjoyed. :D

Any good advice is always appreciated.

Thanks!
 
#3
Thanks for the tips and direction to the previous thread.

We will try the CitrusStrip and see if it can cut the paint. The brown top coat comes off easily, but the ivory base coat is thick and difficult to remove...it may be oil base paint from the 1960's...who could have done such a thing to a bass?:crying:

If there are any other tips or tricks let me know...this will be a project. ;)
 
#4
Wow! The CitrusStrip works great! Nice and slow, gives you plenty of time to work removing the finish. So far the AS bass is in great shape...no real surprises.

Once we have it stripped clean, what finish should we apply? Should I go with an oil finish or put a flattened laquer based finish with the dark red/brown orginal color? I know it will never have the aged patina like it is 70 years old but I do want to keep it as close to orignal as possible.

Thanks for the good advice so far. :)
 
#11
All went well with the stripping using CitrusStrip. I think total time was about 14 hours over five evenings and part of a weekend. There are some small areas to be cleaned up yet, but all in all it went well. We only found one area of orginal dark, dark brown finish. We will go for this color when it comes time to refinish the bass.

As far as old repairs the bass is in really good condition:hyper: ...we found one area at the base of the neck and back where previous reapairs had been done, but they are solid and do not require attention. We are going to let the bass rest for a week or so to really dry out before we do some light (very light with worn out 220 grit paper) sanding. I guess I can get out my oil paints and brushes from art school (25 years ago) and get started on finding just the right brown hue for this bass. The fun continues.:D
 
#12
MollyKay said:
Wow! The CitrusStrip works great! Nice and slow, gives you plenty of time to work removing the finish. So far the AS bass is in great shape...no real surprises.

Once we have it stripped clean, what finish should we apply? Should I go with an oil finish or put a flattened laquer based finish with the dark red/brown orginal color? I know it will never have the aged patina like it is 70 years old but I do want to keep it as close to orignal as possible.

Thanks for the good advice so far. :)
Click to expand...

I started stripping the finish off of my yam colored Eberle using CitrusStrip. Great stuff! Even though this bass is laminated, it's fun to see what the wood really looks like under the lacquer; pretty decent figuring.
 
#13
I know there is another thread with this same information right now but I thought I should continue in this thread since I started it...we purchased the Waterlox sealer/finisher yesterday along with a selection of Winsor & Newton light fast oil paints (browns, blacks, burnt umber etc.). From all that I have read we should start with a spanky clean bass completely in the white and lightly sanded. Apply two coats of the Waterlox to start, then tint the Waterlox with the oil paints to get the desired color. The tint coats could be 6-8 coats (or more) to get the rich red brown. Once we have the desired color we should finsh with two clear coats of the same Waterlox sealer/finisher. We are to let each coat dry completely and lightly sand between each coat (even wet sanding, my husband has many years in auto body refinishing, so wet sanding is something he is very good at) to get a sheen and all the surface imperfections out.

Please can someone confirm I have understood this process correctly. Thanks a bunch...I can't wait to see what this is going to look like :hyper:

Mollykay
 
#15
Thank you Arnold, I appreciate your wisdom and advice. I thought applying color in tinted coats sounded like a long process but I also read on another thread that stain should not be applied directly to the bass while it is in the white…it could end up looking like furniture. So with these two different schools of thought and knowing we want a dark reddish brown…what would be the best way to get the desired results with no short cuts, we want to do this the right way? I am all ears…or I should say I’m the ears and my husband is the skill and hands.

A Man who works with his hands is a laborer
A Man who works with his brain is a craftsman
But a Man who works with his hands, his brain and his heart is an artist
 
#16
I've been pursuing the gel stain glaze route. But I can not get this stuff to look like much other than a mess of brush strokes. I think it might overly obscure the veneer's figure as well. The base I used was Tru Oil. The quality of the base is very nice I think, but I'm stumped on what to do next.

Can artist oils be used to tint Tru Oil?

I've also got some Behmen Violin Varnish I could try. Artist oils a possiblity there as well?
 
#17
Hi Every one, I own a Squier Affinity Series P-Bass and I would like to strip off the paint and leave it with the natural-wood finish. Any suggestions, help, advices, instructions, comments? My bass has black paint, is the chinese version of the affinity series. Thanks
 

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