Another Olympic White Strat Relic

Just finished up this beautiful guitar - came out better than I expected. Looks and plays amazing with Bare Knuckle Irish Tour Pickups. The guitar was stripped to bare wood, re-shaped to early 19060's body contours and re-finished in Nitro Olympic White. The body was then aged for 15 hours under UVB light to age the finish to the yellow/amber look of vintage guitars. Finish checking and wear patterns were applied prior to ageing the finish. It turned out to be a very convincing relic job.

 

Olympic White Strat Body Relic

I have been working on this for a while now - a Customer sent his Tobacco Sunburst Strat in for a re-spray and relic job. I have photographed much of the process (I have left out a few "trade secrets"..)
The guitar started life as a standard Strat with the really thick modern polyester finish:

Stripping off this finish takes elbow grease and a heat gun. I have tried all available paint strippers (even aircraft stripper) with no luck - I find the only way to remove this modern finish is with a good quality heat gun, taking your time not to scorch the wood:

Looks really rough right now but only the top coats have been removed - Fender seals the wood with a wickedly hard product as shown below:

Lots of hand sanding will get you back to bare wood, ready for a bit of Vintage Fender body shaping and some grain filling:

After a final sand to remove excess grain filler it's time for a coat of primer (hand flatting as needed):

Several coats of Olympic White Nitrocellulose are applied (hand flatting between every other coat):

Body now painted (sorry about the poor quality picture):

At this point I relic the body in accordance with the Customers instructions - I would call this one medium / heavy - The basic relicing has been roughed in, along with the aged hardware:

More work is done to smooth out some of the wear - then its time for my light box to blast the nitrocellulose with some UVB-313 light for 17 hours:

This gives a nice aged yellow finish to nitrocellulose - the finish checking applied earlier is also enhanced by this process:

To give us the final reliced Olympic White Stratocaster Body:

Sky Art's Guitar Star Show in Cardiff

I am going to be at Sky Art's Guitar Star show in Cardiff on Thursday 9th April - it's being held at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Castle Grounds, Cathays Park, Cardiff, CF10 3ER.

http://www.sky.com/tv/show/guitar

I am obviously not entering (for all who have heard me play will understand!) but I will be there with a few guitars from my collection on view for the production. There are two sessions - 1.00PM and 4.00PM - should be a great day out and lets hope to see some local talent (Dude! NO STAIRWAY!)

New Light Box for Relicing Nitrocellulose Finishes

Just finished making this light box to relic nitro finishes on guitar bodys. The 2 fluorescent tube are specialized to output UVB light at 313nm - this is the band of light that ages nitrocellulose to that nice vintage amber. Its my first try at this technique but from all my research its the way to go - much more authentic than applying a slight amber tint over existing finishes.

The guitar will be featured in a long post I am putting together detailing the relicing process. I am keeping a few secrets to myself though.