73 Guitars: Getting There

Shot it with some Metallic Silver Duplicolor acrylic lacquer, courtesy of my favorite paint supply guys Manny Moe and Jack. The top looks great, which is where I concentrated my surface prep. The Duplicolor paints are really easy to work with, they come in cool colors and dry quickly. The silver metallic looks just freakin' KILLER in person. The body just glows.

I learned a very valuable lesson - imperfections on the surface will be magnified like 100x after spraying on lacquer. There are some bad spots that I chose to leave, thinking I could bury and level it with the clearcoat, but that ain't happening. They're on the back and sides and they are spots that i just couldn't bring myself to sand for one more minute. At this point I'm happy to get where I am, so I'm not going to sweat the small stuff on the back. Some of the more accomplished ReRanch guys wll probably wince in pain when they see this but this is my first real refinishing project, I'm happy just to get the top looking pretty good.

Here's the the worst trouble-spot on the back. Some of that will get covered with the blue Shelby stripes. The sides aren't great, much harder to sand those areas. I'm accepting the ugliness and moving on.

I got one stripe done last night and some of it peeled off with the masking tape, so I have to touch up two small areas, no big deal. I guess I waited too long before removing the tape. More on that later.

here's a few mock-up shots before the stripe and with the completed headstock. I'm trying to decide if I should paint the black pickup cover or not.