Update with pics
The Paintjob, Volume 1
Before I could actually start painting, there were a few a preparations I had to do. I felt anxious finally getting ready to paint. Nervous about messing it up, but excited to finally do what I've been planning to do. Here comes the fun part
1. Mask off the neck pocket. I've failed to do that previously, so I know firsthand how annoying the consequences of painting the neck pocket can be.
2. Figure out where to paint it; I can't spray paint in or just outside my 1 bedroom apartment.
3. Figure out how to set it up to dry properly and where I can leave to fume.
4. Finally get to painting. More specifically, a base layer of black on everything.
Originally I wanted to use flame to char the grain, but I found that I don't have a hot enough source to do that with enough precision. I would just end up making everything dark and possibly warp my baby. I figured the best approach would be to paint everything black first, and then sand back just enough so that all that remains is the black paint in the grain: exactly where I want it. The trick is to go slow and soft enough to only remove what I want. I've gained enough practice by now, I believe I can do it.
Step 1: Easy peasy, no pics. You'll just have to trust me that I masked over the neck pocket with blue tape. It was a little difficult to cleanly cut off the excess to get the tape flush on the edges. I should've put on a fresh blade on the box cutter.
Step 2: Found a spot. An undisclosed place where I could park my car; a covered space that'll keep direct sunlight and wind to a minimum.
Step 3: This is where da pics at. I've seen plenty of examples of rigs to hold the body while painting, so this was a piece of cake:
The tricky part was figuring out how to do the neck because I wanted to paint all of it, yet doing something similar to what I did with the body would cover some part of the neck. Finally I came up with a solution:
That long blue thing is a stainless steel 18" ruler that I protected with painter's tape. I hand screwed in screws (slightly smaller diameter than the ones to hold the neck to the body as an attempt to preserve the screw holes from wear) and duct taped the ruler to the screws. And this is how it works:
That's my keyboard stand with my handy dandy utility board sitting on top. There is just enough gap that even if the neck swings, it won't touch the board. With a slight adjustment, it also works with the body:
Given how much heavier the body is than the neck, I needed something substantially sturdier, so I used some boards that I previously tried to salvage from a pedalboard I made. Between the screw heads shearing off during deconstruction and all the wood glue between them, I couldn't pry them apart to be used in any of my later iterations of pedalboards, but it works perfectly fine for this application. The body is pretty heavy on this makeshift seesaw, so I have to shift the board to favor the neck side AND have the neck on it to balance it; that's why I'm holding it in place in the picture.
My plan was to use this stand to pain the neck, and then set them both on it to dry. But where will the stand go? Since I don't have a garage or anything like that, and I barely use my car, I made a plan to let the pieces fume off a bit before keeping them in the trunk of my CR-V with the windows cracked. I'm not worried about a break-in, even though I park it on the street; my car is very dirty and unappealing to thieves
Step 4:
After I got everything ready, I still had some waiting to do. Since I would be painting and basically letting it dry outside, the weather conditions had to be right. It was super humid here for weeks, with 100% humidity overnight consistently. Finally, this past Monday, a heat wave brought in very warm and vary dry air with Monday's overnight humidity level <30%! Time to paint.
So I load everything up, start heading to the painting location, realize I forgot the paint lol, come back to get it, say bye to the cats one more time, and then get to business.
My first location was too heavy with foot traffic, particularly of the variety that would probably tell me I shouldn't be painting here
, so I went to another similar spot. Golden.
Before we get to the good stuff, a quick tangent: my plan for the pickguard was to use a repurposed carbon steel sheet I originally acquired to make arrowheads (whole other build story
), but since I rushed through cutting the outline with tinsnips and then let it sit while I figured everything else out for the bass, the would-be-pickguard became a bent rust-bucket with jagged edges. First thing I did at my painting locale was to remove as much rust as I could, flatten it, and then see what I could do about the jagged knife edges. Part of it rusted through and I figured that I would have to remove too much of the metal to get the edges flush.
Trash.
Now the fun part. Remember, I'm painting everything black and then sanding it back to leave only the grain and any other divots/depressions with the black paint; though the fingerboard will actually stay all black and topped with multiple layers of super glue. There was a slight wind, so I sprayed with the can closer to certain parts than I would've otherwise. There was also one particular passerby who seemed to be keeping a close eye on me (and had some authority to get me to leave), so I felt a little pressure to keep things speeding along and avoid a conflict. Here is the setup:
Here is a closer look at some of the runs (will be sanded away):
And here is how I put it in my trunk. I feared the pieces banging around in transport back home, so I oriented them in a way that made the most sense to me. I used a lot (probably not to some people) of duct tape to secure them to the board, and I used what I could to weigh down the stand for stabilization:
I laughed at myself when I was attaching the little strips of duct tape to the upper screws on the neck in an attempt to keep it more steady. They quickly came apart in transit. Probably on the first bump. There are a lot of bumps between where I painted everything and where I parked my car at home. I drove very slowly and carefully and it paid off. No damage
It's been so hot and dry that my nose has been bleeding. I think that's good enough for this base layer to finish drying. I plan to only use that location again on the weekends to avoid any more encounters.
I will be sanding back the black on Friday, and then applying color this weekend.
Stay tuned for
The Paintjob, Volume 2, coming soon to a forum near you.
(it's this one)
oh well, nothing some sanding can't fix. I then drilled a new tuner hole... kinda. I don't have a big enough drill bit, so I went with a few 1/4" holes. Lots more sanding to do:
