Here's my rig:
For years I'd been fussing with a good method for holding my Scroll Bass bodies and necks while painting them. I had maple sticks that bolted to the bodies and necks. I hung them from swiveling hooks, and played around with clamping them horizontally.
As I've gained experience with spray painting, I've learned how important it is to be able to hold the painted surface up in line with a low-angle light source, and to be able to easily move it around while spraying, to be able to really see how the paint is laying down.
So I came up with this contraption. The holders are made from square aluminum tubing, 3/4" square x 1/8" wall. A 1/4" aluminum plate is bolted on the end, which has both threaded and clearance holes for my standard neck bolt patterns. The same holders can bolt to a neck or a body. The holder stalk is 16" long. I found that that is a good length to be able to handle a body or neck one handed. With a spray gun in one hand, I can grab a neck by the holder, and plug it into the swiveling arm. I don't have to set the gun down and use both hands. That's a surprisingly big time saver in the spray booth.
A key part of the whole idea is using the small size square tubing. Notice that the openings in the swiveling arm are also square, but larger (1 1/4" square). When you plug the 3/4" square tubing into the square hole, it snaps right to 90 degree intervals, just by gravity. But the larger square is big enough that the aluminum tube will rotate inside it. Grab the tube between the neck and the swivel arm and turn it, and the neck snaps 90 degrees.
I've seen other guys' holder rigs that use round tubing. But I saw that, if the part was offset much from the centerline of the tubing, the body or neck wouldn't stay still, and would slip and rotate. It required fumbling around with some kind of a clamp. The square tubing eliminated that problem.
Note that the 1 1/4" holes in the swiveling arm are inclined upwards a small amount, so that the square tubing sits level when it's resting in there. The arm is made of 1/2" plywood and some maple blocks. There are three horizontal holes that the holders can plug into, to get different heights. Plus I added one down at the bottom that stands the holder up at 45 degrees, to get those edges at the bottom end.
The swiveling arm has a vertical aluminum shaft that plugs into maple bearing blocks that are attached to the corner of the bench. It easily spins 360 about the vertical axis. I worked out the offset of the arm so that the necks and bodies spin approximately around their center.
That works really well. I can rotate a body all the way around, spraying the horizontal surface, moving every square inch of it in line with the light to be able to see exactly what I'm doing, right where the paint is laying down. Note the vertical 24" flourescent lamp. That's a big help in getting that reflected light off of the surface, so that I can see the texture as I spray.
Same with the necks. Now I can see every bit of it in the right light, while I'm spraying all those surfaces on the headstock.
I also have drying racks nearby which have similar square holes that the holders plug into, with one hand.
This rig has really improved the quality and efficiency of my painting. It was well worth the investment to build it.
