Stripping the paint from a Ibanez 540r custom guitar project. How to build guitars by Jon Letts. Lutherie tutorial. #bassist #guitar #guitarrepair #ibanez #ibanezguitar
How do you know what finish a certain guitar has and what techniques need to be used to strip that paint? I dont think many manufactures list what kind of finish they put on a guitar. I have a couple guitars i want to repaint and was wondering whats the best way to remove old finish. One i want to do is a schecter km7 mklll and i only want to do the top wood. It has a satin finish over a stained poplar burl top. I dont like the stain color they used but the wood grain looks awsome and if i could somehow keep the new finish transparent that would be my first choice. Can the existing stain color be taken out or faded enough to re stain? Even with a dark stain? It has a bluish/purple fade stain existing. If i could get the satin finish off snd stain it black id be ok with that then spray satin clear over it. Any suggestions?great video thank you
Most factory finishes are polyurethane or water based acrylic. If it is only a thin satin I would recommend just sanding it. The colour should sand right off. If you are only removing part of the finish I wouldn’t recommend heat as it could affect the areas you want to keep. Thanks.
I have the same problem with my 1995 USA Custom Ibanez. The finish started cracking and flaking off. I’ve always hated the studio paint job which was some outer space idea with weird lines etc. I’d like for it to be filled in and painted a candy color.
@@JonLettsGuitars understandable. Would've been nice to see it action or some kind of review. I never quite understood why Ibanez discontinued it. Vai has Jem/Pia but we still get the RG. We could easily have the Radius along side JS.
HEAT! Damn..wish I had seen this earlier. I did one 4 weeks ago and of course, stripper failed so I went to sanding. The wood on the front was NOT good quality so staining it went out the window.
Every type of finish serves it's purpose. Urethane finishes are amazing at taking daily abuse and are way better at protecting woods from dings compared to the finish checking that would eventually occur in nitro after a nasty ding... As for your comment that urethane finishes are a "plastic", just a lil fyi, Nitro laquer is one of the most primitive forms of man made "plastic" resins that are still in (in ever dwindling numbers, but none the less) used today. Urethane can't be dissolved by simple forms or acetate stripper because its base compounds are far more resistant to solvents after it has cured. If it peels off of wood, it means the wood was either abused, introduced to moisture, or not properly prepped for finish when initially sprayed.. Nitro will dissolve at essentially any point in its cured form once introduced to even mild quantities of acetate solvents. Nitro is also extremely volatile and hazardous to human health and the environment due to it's ability to evaporate up to 85% of it's atomized form in the atmosphere... it has been illegal to use by manufacturers as a finish in the automotive industry for quite a while.
Yea. Poly has its uses as I say. But it isn’t really about making a better guitar. It’s a practical solution. Nitro is closer to actual laquer. And yes the thinners are harmful. I did say it possibly was more harmful. I don’t know. Nitro is much better for guitars though. And much easier for the small builder/diy approach. The ageing process of nitro adds beauty imo. Whereas ploy just ends up flaking off in chunks and us irreparable. Nitro is absolutely the better finish for musical instrument. It may be a kind of plastic but it behaves very differently to poly and acrylic. They use water based acrylic nowadays as far as I’m aware. I’m no polymer scientist by any means.
@@JonLettsGuitars i do enjoy nitro, especially when it comes to repairs of vintage guitars or Gibson, and as a general whole i do enjoy the way a nitro finish ages, on certain instruments.... but my builds almost always get a two component polyacrylic or urethane clear/hardener combo sprayed through an LVLP sprayer over whatever basecoat i end up using, the results are the strongest, have the most material adhesion per coat by far.... and are the best at self levelling, which cuts down on any sort of level sanding needed. These finishes are not easy without practice and the right equipment/setup, but the same can be said with ANY finish worth its weight in protective qualities.
@@FulcrumsEdge yea. Nitro is very user friendly. I’ve always believed mixing products is a bad idea. Due to the different plasticity the finishes eventually pull each other apart. But I don’t really know what’s best and what isn’t. It depends what works for you. I’ve been led to believe that nitro is harder, definitely not the most durable but so easy to fix that that becomes less important for me. I’ve painted a lot of guitars with nitro with great results. That glass effect never gets old. But only ever used rattle cans. Which are cool but obviously more expensive that way. Thanks for your input (I mean that). 🙏
@@FulcrumsEdge I haven’t used laquer for years. Just danish oil. “Laquer” just takes too long for me. I don’t have a booth either so it’s really intrusive for the workshop. Danish oil is also pretty bad for the environment.
@@JonLettsGuitars when i say "whatever basecoat i lay down, i mean more of the style of finish applied, be it a transparent dye stain, sanding sealer/clear coat, solid opaque color, or pearl/metallic finish. I don't mix finishes with differing solvent bases vastly different chemical compounds. in some cases there are some pretty incompatible finishes, nitro being one of them, and being volatile after curing is the primary reason. combining some water based finishes with oil or solvent based finishes can often result in a ruined finish. There are some very well known exceptions to that rule and is one of the great advantages of modern polymers. they are, on the whole, inert, once cured. the only way to remove them is with heat and by physical force. as rule of thumb i agree with the sentiment that, unless I want to spend ages testing out finish combinations (which i def don't want to do) sticking to finishes with compatible base compounds is a pretty good way to prevent headaches.
