an old RELIC

apply the decal

had to widen the neck pocket a little - out come the mini scrapers

decal applied. just like your old model airplane.

prepping the neck for a decal

more sanding

soak your paper before sanding - this will keep the material from wadding up on your sandpaper and possibly scratching your beautifully sanded up till now surface.

i bought these little sanding pads from stew mac and i love them. i use them all the time - nuts, saddles, fingerboard repairs, everything.

so i got the neck nice and smooth - no more orange peel, very shiny

here, i cut the decal around the letters to make it look a little more like the original.

this is me fixing my goof. i sprayed the white toner on the neck as well as the body - shouldn't have. the original necks were not toned with white. now you can see why - all the black position markers turned milky and gross. what i did was scrape off the finish in those areas, and since i had to spray more lacquer over the decal anyway, i'll be retouching these areas with clear lacquer later.

and i scraped all the finish off of every fret. it wasn't too bad, actually - scrapes right off.

sanding, more sanding, and more sanding

so once i finished the finish spraying - i did multiple coats of vinyl sealer, then a toner coat, then clear lacquer, then sand the high spots, then clear again - i started to sand the finish smooth. this is where things got very labor intensive for me. i decided to relic this guitar, to make it look more authentic as a 50+ year old guitar. this meant A LOT more sanding, and very careful attention to detail in order to make the rub-through effect more believable. i'm going to just say that i took my time and looked at pictures of the original guitar to get there. hopefully, it looks fairly authentic. i'll let you be the judge. here are some pictures.

here are a few pictures of my headstock decal - more on that later...

I also sprayed lacquer over the pick guard - I read somewhere that they did it at Fullerton this way. It didn't really make much difference to my build, other than another sand - through look once this was relic-ed.

An explaination for my hiatus

Been a while since I posted here... Sorry about that. I was filling in as a squad boss on Pleasant Valley Hotshots and had absolutely no time at home between all the travel and a newborn baby. I did get some things accomplished in the fall, though, and i took a lot of pictures. Bare with me as a update this blog. Thanks!!