Specificly, mahogany? I have an old SG that I've had since I was a teenager, and it's got lots of dents and gouges on it and burns and stuff carved in it from years of angst and abuse. I want to smooth it out and paint it (it's a late 70s natural finish guitar) and I figure that my good friend bondo can help me out. Anyone know?
Hay Sticky' Id have it appraised before goin' that route......It ~IS~ a Gibson ya know.... Its Mahogany right? Bondoo wil stick to Pine and any dry wood but if it were Walnut etc with natural oily texture Id wonder.... Seriously though -rather than risk devaluating it-I'd not do anything with that guitars "character" or patina....just like as it were a car! Although you are talkin to a guy who bought a new guitar-Fender[red] in 1968- sawed off the "horns" and made it pear shaped and painted it white!
Heh heh! It's a "dark ages" gibson... '79. Nice player, but i really f'd it up over the years. It was my first real guitar, an it's been through hell with me. But over the years I scavenged the stock gibby parts off of it for other guitars and my old girlfriend's brother busted the neck off it plaing the "Barracuda" riff... man how he loved "neck bends"... so it has become this total bastard. It's soo goddam ugly that I can't stand to look at it, and I'd never get more than a couple hundred for it, so I'm just going to fix 'er up the best I can and play it and it'll be the guitar I give my kid one day so s/he can destroy it all over again. Thanks for the advice guys! I'll have to let you know how it turns out. Next question: Can you get cool finishes in a rattle can, like flake and stuff?
Awww! Barrcuda! Dun Diddleun Diddleun Diddleun Diddleun Diddleun Diddleun Diddleun Duuuuuunn... waahhhhhhhh wah wah wah wah!
Before you do the filler bit, try this. I've restored a few old family rifles over the years and they came out very nice. Works on walnut as well as beech and I'll bet it works just fine on your SG. SG stands for? Strat Guitar? Anyway, pull all the hardware, strings, electrics, etc. off until you're down to the wood body. Since it's an electric - I think - you may be able to remove the neck with no problems. I would make a note of how tight, how far the bolts/neck rod are in so you can duplicate the action height. Use a mild stripper to remove the finish. Give it an initial sanding with worn 100 grit sandpaper - for wood, not wet/dry. Be careful you don't round over any supposed to be sharp edges. Get an iron, a non-steam iron type. Get a terry cloth washrag, preferably a white one. Moisten the washrag a little past damp, but not dripping. Lay the washrag over the dent, apply iron set at medium heat over the washrag and let steam permeate the wood pores. When the washrag is close to dry - no more steam - remove it and see what the dents look like. You may have to do the steam bit 2-3-4 times, but most times the dent will come out. After you've removed all the dents, do the sanding bit until you're at the point of smoothness you want. Usually a fine grit sandpaper - again, for wood - will get you where you want to go. When you're doing the final sanding, moisten the wood so rough wood hairs or whatever the hell they're called will rise. Sand these off and repeat until the wood remains smooth after sanding. Then you're ready for a finish. If you're doing a gunstock - and it may work for your guitar if it has nice wood - get some Birchwood-Casey Tru-Oil at Wally World (about $5.00) and rub in with your fingers. Next day, when thoroughly dry, steel wool the Tru-Oil with 4/0 steel wool. Wipe the steel wool residuals off carefully, vacuum the wood and run a magnet over it as well. You want to get all the steel wool residuals off, otherwise they will be part of the finish. Repeat 2-3 times, steel wooling each time until all the pores are well filled. What you'll end up with will be a somewhat plastic Weatherby rifles type finish. Which is to say, glossy. If you like that, stop there. If you're a trad guy about firearms as I am, steel wool one last time bringing the finish to a nice satin. After that, any scratches are easily taken care of with a bit of hand rubbed in Tru-Oil and a touch of steel wooling. In 1952 my dad bought a new Winchester Model 74 22 semi-auto rifle to take back to Arkansas one summer. All my uncles and cousins were solid Remington men and didn't think Winchesters shot very well. Dad, being an excellent shot and a good athlete beat most of them and held his own with the rest. All of which made the Arkansas gang look a little differently at Winchesters. Since I wasn't old enough to have a 22 even though dad purchased it for me, he left it with my grandfather since granpa didn't have a squirrel rifle. I didn't get the rifle back until 1972 and it was beat to hell. Granpa, being a good ol boy had loaned the 22 to most any of my dumb-ass cousins who wanted to use it. It was pretty beat by the time I got it, more than likely from my dumb-ass cousins letting it rattle around in the back of a pickup on rough dirt roads. I restored the rifle as outlined here, had it re-blued to factory level and it is a thing of beauty. At least my dumb-ass cousins cleaned the little rifle. It still has an excellent bore so I lucked out there. Maybe filler is the way to go for your guitar, but I'd give the dent-raising technique a try. Sure would be worth it if you could end up with a natural wood finish that radiates a warmth of it's own. And yeah, I still got the rifle. Did I mention my Arkansas cousins were a bunch of dumb-asses?
Strip the area, sand it with 80 grit, and use lacquer thinner to remove any oils in the wood. Have made fiberglass molds using cheap luan plywood and bondo. I'm also a furniture maker by trade.
That's a pretty good tip! SG stands for Spanish Guitar, if I have my Gibson history right, but the Gibson SG bears no real resemblance to a spanish guitar. It's the style that Angus Young from AC/DC plays... I want to paint it in the end because I hate the natural wood finish on this particular guitar.
Hey Marc, I did the same thing to an EBO back about '75 or '76 ....sanded that beat-up thick-ass varnish off with 80 grit on an electric drill and rattlecanned it with clear How I ever learned to paint cars is still a mystery..... You might wanna invest $15 in some catalyzed spot putty instead of bondo---it sands easier. You ain't got a hair on your ass if you don't FLAKE it oh, and I though SG stood for "Stinkyfinger's Guitar" rock on mid-tenn mike PBFL
yes it sticks good, I've used it to repair doors, windows and woodwork on houses and on my '57 Thompson lapstrake runabout but you might talk to a few guitar restorers first. they may have a better suggestion than automotive bondo your's one of these?
I'm sure that your project isn't as drastic as this.... I'm rebuilding a full scale wooden model of a civil war cannon that had dry-rotted something awful. To stabilize the barrel and wheel hub (only one could be salvaged so I'm using it as a destroyed battlefield prop) I scraped out the worst parts and soaked in a primer coat of of polyester glass resin then filled the rest with Bondo. If its a reasonably flat surface you might be able to get away with just the primer coat and letting it self level. Good luck. Like my boat builder friends in Maine say..."Putty-n-Paint an' make 'er what she ain't"
Have you given any thought to restoring the SG, stickylifter? I bought a CNC cut swamp ash body for my Tele and it wasnt that high new.....www.STEWARTMACDONALD.COM ...its a small investment to increase the value of it instead of just putty and paintin it man! [you wanna sell it?]
HA! I wish! Mine is the retarded younger brother of this one. It's just unfinished mahogany. It looks like a plank with tuners. It was made in '79, just befor the "Firebrand" series where they actually burned the logo into the headstock. That was the Dark Ages for Gibson, the 80s. I found one like it on ebay, but you have to picture mine as though it were a picnic table from a public beach with names and sayings carved in the back. On the top cutaway I scratched in teeth and an eye to look like the mouths that used to be on P-51 mustang planes in WW2! It has cigarette burns on it and chips from throwing darts at it... I was an angry young punk/idiot and I took out a lot of my hatred on my guitars (and cars, and public property, and...). A couple got smashed, one got burned... This one was my first real guitar, so its life was spared. It's like this one: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7387768806&fromMakeTrack=true I played my faithful Gretsch for years, and the SG (ugly, shameful punching bag and reminder of shittier times that she was) sat in a case for a decade. I uncorked it recently, and it actually was growng mold, so I let her out for air and now I want to do her up nice. Like lifting the restraining order and getting your girl fake boobs for your 20th anniversary
Hey Mike! Howare ya? HA HA! Stinkyfinger's Guitar, eh? Well, whatever it stood for before, that's what it stands for now! I was thinking about flaking it... can you get that in a can? I was looking at Conder's site, and he does some SWEEEET candy over flake jobs that made me flip.
Yes bondo sticks to wood just fine......but read your description above and ask yourself if you came across an old picnic table from the beach, would you bondo it and refinish it, or would you leave history alone, for better or worse? Sounds like you have a shitty 80's guitar with alot of soul...leave it be.
You bet bondo will stick! Just clean that wood up really really good, first. As for high 'flake paint, check out Seymour paint at seymourpaint.com They've got a line of very high metalflake colors (rattle can!) that are outstanding! Be sure to get plenty of clear, too. You'll need it to smooth that stuff out when you're done! It's very heavy stuff. If you don't see it on the website, just call 'em. They do have it! I know Abomber has used it on his stuff (see Seek and Destroy) and he tossed a couple cans my way. I've used it on all kinds of stuff, and it rocks AND rolls! Good luck!
There are some good points mentioned above. Stay away from the Oil based finish (gunstock/furniture) techniques if you decide to restore it. The guitar's value will go down with a refin' regardless. Just depends on how good or bad it's been done. Sounds like you don't care however. Bondo has been used for many years as a wood filler over repairs. I would try the soldering iron on a damp cloth trick first for smaller dings. You can not apply Bondo or wood filler over the nitrocellulose laquer finish. Nor would you want to rattle can over laquer, unless you REALLY don't care about it. You would have to apply paint over filler, usually, so that's an option. You should give it half a chance since it served you for many years. Get out the sandpaper and make that mohagony look good again. You want your kid to respect it don't you? Oh yeah, SG stands for Solidbody Guitar. Good luck. Z
I couldn't find the flake paint there... I don't see any metalic or flake paint on their site. A search for metal flake turned up no results either. Can you get this stuff in stores? Thanks
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