Paint…This seems like it would be an easy thing to figure out. How hard could it be? When looking back at the test run, paint really was where most of the problems originated. I mentioned before that a RustOleum primer was used on the test guitar. That was the same brand of paint we used as well. RustOleum lacquer can be found at any Home Depot and seemed like a good choice at the time. What actually ended up being true about it was that it seemed to dry really slowly and once it did finally dry it wasn’t a very hard coat. Slow drying caused problems with the tape sinking into the guitar when we outlined the flames as well as issues much later when we actually reinstalled the hardware.
The clear coat didn’t end up much better off. The RustOleum clear went on about as poorly as the paint and also had problems drying quickly and hard. After days of not being happy with the way it turned out we eventually sanded the clear off and sprayed it with a Duplicolor clear coat thinking that the auto paint would do a better job of drying fast and hard. Although being much better, the Duplicolor clear still had some of the same issues as before.
So this time I’ve decided to go with a different solution. Most research tends to show that lacquer is the way to go. Only it looks like a nitrocellulose lacquer is really what would work best. The web site I ended up ordering my nitro supplies from was Guitar Reranch. The site has a lot of good info on how to go about painting a guitar and I plan on using it often during this process.
The paint got shipped to me very quickly and it came in the mail yesterday. I sprayed a quick coat last night that I will post pictures of soon, but already I can tell a huge difference in the paint. The coverage is excellent, the initial flash time on the paint seemed to be about 15 – 20 minutes, and I ended up with zero paint runs which was a common problem before. Granted the nitrocellulose is probably very toxic and was killing me slowly as I was painting, but everything worked really well for the initial coat. I’m planning on investing in something to help keep me from sucking down all the fumes before I get too much further into this.
The real test for the paint will be how hard it dries. I’ll get an introduction to that very soon once I start applying tape to it for the stripes. I’ll probably spray 3 or 4 more coats and then give it a few days to dry before attempting the stripes. I should have pictures of the white coat up soon.
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