Here we have a twin neck body, part of a custom build by Luthier Si Bailey. It's come to me for some artwork and finishing.

The design going onto this guitar is a fluttering 'Union Flag' (often mistakenly called the Union Jack) design. This confusion about the naming of the flag comes about , because in the Royal Navy the 'Union Flag' is flown on the 'Jack Staff' - and as a result the flag is now regularly (wrongly) called the Union Jack instead of correctly calling it the 'Union Flag'. Anyway, my little chunter out of the way, lets crack on..............

Here we have a really very nicely shaped guitar, perfectly shaped for the design going onto it - just as I like it!

Notice how Si has painted the pickup and electrical cavities with special electrical shielding paint.

Okay, so the first stage is to seal in the surface of the raw wood and smooth down any loose fibres in the woods surface. Here as you can see, the front of the guitar body has been painted with a sanding sealer. This is allowed to dry off.................see how rough the surface looks.........

It's then thoroughly sanded down with 150 grit sandpaper..............

Notice how the roughness in the surface grain has now been sanded smooth.

This same process is also done on the sides.....................here you can still see the remnants of dried sealer on the white binding, prior to being fully rubbed down.

Here, fully rubbed down.....................looking much smoother already.

This whole process, sealing front sides and back, rubbing down and repeating the process was done three times to get the surface perfect and ready for the priming stage. Time consuming, but in the long run worth it.

As you can see here the surface of the guitar is now pretty smooth. The next stage then is to mask off the area we don't want to paint over. Here just started the masking process with one of the neck pockets.

And here both neck pockets, the pickup cavities....................

...............and the electrical cavities are masked off. Obviously, the neck cavities are masked off so as not to affect the fitting of the two necks later on, the other electrical cavities are masked to protect the special shielding paint that's already been applied to them.

Then it's on to the fiddly job...................masking off all that rather fine binding. Character building as they used to say in the Marines.

Easiest way is to roughly apply masking tape.............

Then trim it all back very carefully with a scalpel.

And here she is ready for primer. The ugly monstrosity screwed into the neck pockets is a means of hanging and horizontally mounting the guitar body through the priming, base coating and lacquering stages.................but more of that later.

Right, after the first primer coat what appeared to be a pretty smooth surface suddenly started to look more like a ploughed field - this in spite of many sealer coats and lots of rubbing down prior to priming. Just one of those things - but suddenly what should have been a straight forward job became altogether more involved.

Obviously, there's no way that this was ever going to rub down from here without hitting the grain of the wood all over again. So the only option from here was a very thin layer of filler and lots more rubbing down. Just to make it all the more complicated, the binding makes getting the guitar smooth to the edges more difficult.

Here, one of numerous thin layers of filler is being applied courtesy of an old 'flexible friend' - not quite so flexible after this!

Eventually, after more filling and rubbing down than I like to remember.............

This guitar body was starting to become slightly more like it........

This is without doubt the worst part of my job - and added to this particular job there are two others at exactly the same stage, so it seems like I've been rubbing down and prepping for a month!

Getting closer, but still where grain like this can be seen it's no use even thinking about a basecoat. So, more filling and rubbing down.................and finally..........

She's smooth......

Don't worry about the binding......it'll be there!

This preparation stage of the job is 'THE' singularly most important stage of any guitar painting/refinishing work in my opinion - cop out at this early stage and almost guaranteed you'll regret it later.

Anyway..........'Before'...........

.........and 'After'..........

This guitar is now ready for basecoating................let the good bit begin!

Decided to lay the design down on the guitar before basecoating. This now obviously means that I have some masking to do at this stage rather than basecoating and then drawing the design out. But really, whichever way it's done it amounts to the same thing and I really want to get on with some actual painting........so time to get this twin neck done! Next step then is to mask out all but the white areas of the guitar in the morning, then it's on to some painting.............finally!!!!

Here the design is masked out leaving the white areas exposed to be painted.

Then the guitar body is base coated white..........

Front and rear.

The masking is then removed from the guitar showing the white areas from the basecoating. At this stage the guitar needs a sealer coat of lacquer. The sealer coat seals in the white paint onto the surface of the guitar. This is so that when the next masking is applied, the newly applied white paint won't lift away with the second masking as it's removed.

The guitar is set horizontally for the lacquering stages. Some people prefer to spray their lacquer coats with the guitar hanging vertically. It's all a matter of personal preference, but I find I get better results this way.

Starting to look more like a proper guitar already. The back and sides of this guitar will eventually be blue, but they look pretty good in white even after one lacquer coat, so that bodes well for the guitar once it's fully finished.

Okay, here she is with the white paint applied and lacquered in and now hanging vertically again to put less stress on the screws holding this fairly heavy body onto the 'carrier'. This now has to be left overnight to cure prior to a light rub down and then masking out again ready for the next colour to be painted in.

Here the now lacquered body has been rubbed down with 1000 grade wet and dry ready for the next masking.

This masking is applied to the white and (unpainted) red sections of the flag........

Then the whole guitar is painted in the main blue colour.

The guitar body is then ready for a some 'playing about' with the airbrush.

First off though some masking is applied to give some distinct edges to the flag.

Some very light work with the airbrush starts to give the flag a little bit of movement.

Really, it's only possible to get a rough effect at this stage. Only when all the colours are painted in and they can be seen working together will it be possible (for me anyway), to get the whole thing balanced and working properly.

But here with the masking removed she's moving in the right direction...........

Time to carefully mask up again, this time to paint in the red sections of the flag.

I'm using overhead projector laminates for my main masking here to minimise the amount of masking tape applied to the newly painted and unlacquered blue paint. The other advantage of this is that I can clearly see the airbrushing that I've already done on the blue sections. This enables the continuation and matching in of the ripples in the blue section of the flag far more easily into the red sections I'm about to paint.

The first red is applied.........

Once all the red is roughly airbrushed in............

The 'ripples' in the flag can then be lightly airbrushed in to match in with the blue.

Starting to get the feel of it here..........

And here she is with the maskings removed. With all the basic colours pretty much in place the whole thing can now be 'balanced' and tidied up. Some areas badly need lightening and some areas darkening here to make the whole thing work properly. But first of all this needs to be lacquered in now to seal in the red and blue paint. Once that's done and rubbed down again it'll be possible to do the necessary work on the guitar to really make the design work properly.

Here the guitar has been lacquered and left overnight in a very warm spraybooth to bake off. The red paint is now sealed into the design.

Now it's time to rub the whole guitar body down again with 1000 grade wet and dry.

Once the guitar body is rubbed down there are a few little steps that need to taken before we go any further. By now the guitar body has had quite a bit done to it since I started working on it, sealer coats, filler, primer coats, more filler, paint and lacquer coats. All of these stages build up around the various holes and apertures in the guitar body and really need to be cleared out before the next few final stages. Here the worst of the built up layers is removed (very carefully) with a scalpel from inside one of the control holes. It is important to clear these holes as otherwise, when Si comes to fit all the hardware, pots, etc. he'll find himself having to clear out the holes himself, not a huge problem, but if in the process the lacquer chipped or got damaged he wouldn't be in a position to put it right. I can.

Also at this stage, the original masking in the various guitar cavities needs replacing. This is not because it's suddenly not doing the job anymore, but because all of the stages of paint and lacquer applied to the guitar have also built up on this masking. Unlike the layers on the guitar body though, they've not been rubbed down and are now getting quite thick. The danger is that if they're left until the guitar is totally finished, there's always the possibility that the edges of the now extra thick layers of masking film and lacquer will peel back the edge of the lacquer on the guitar itself as the masking is removed. The result of that being much cursing on my part...... and the dog running for cover!

So here we have the rubbed down and unmasked body, with nice clean holes ready for remasking out once again before we go on to the next stage.

Before masking.......

And after masking again.............

Here you can see the masking is deliberately left a few millimetres below the lip of the neck and cavity pockets. We're getting towards the last few stages of this job now and ideally we want the last lacquering stages to flow over these edges strengthening the edges of the lacquer on the guitar face and lessening the chance of the lacquer chipping around the neck pockets when the necks are fitted.

Then it's back to the usual masking out. Here a combination of 'Frisk' masking film and the backing paper from the film are used to mask the guitar body, leaving only the original white sections unmasked. These are now the only part of the design that isn't shadowed in or with any detail airbrushing applied.

So here the first hints of shadow and detail work are applied. They don't look much, but they tie the whole design together and give the design some depth.

Also during this masking, a couple of sections of red and white that couldn't be painted in before are completed.

Here again the ripples airbrushed into the red sections are carried through onto the white areas. This is the real beauty of using a transparent masking, using masking tape here I'd have had no idea where the detail needed to be as I wouldn't be able to see through the masked area.

Likewise with sections between the necks.

And the very nearly finished result.

Here she is with the first of the proper lacquering coats.

And the back of the guitar wearing it's new coat of Kameleon Flip Flop paint. When this has been rubbed down perfectly smooth and relacquered a few more times it'll really gleam blue into mica.

It's amazing how the lacquer lifts out the subtlest tonal differences in the paint.

Actually got some depth to the image now.

Well, that's pretty much it. I still have some minor tidying up to do around the odd section of the guitar, but this will be done as the guitar goes through the final lacquering stages. There will be at least another three coats of lacquer applied to the guitar, each rubbed down before the next is applied. Each minutely thin layer of lacquer getting ever smoother and each taking the best part of a day to rub down, but getting flatter as she goes. These are the processes that really take the time with guitar work, not the painting itself.

Anyway, there is little point in my showing all the lacquering stages here as visibly there's little difference to be seen on camera between lacquer coats. So the next pictures to be added to this page will be after the final lacquer coat has been applied and is rubbed down until it's perfectly smooth. Then the polishing will begin and then.............she's done!

Here the guitar is being lightly rubbed down with 1200 grade wet and dry..........

Once the guitar is rubbed own and perfectly smoothed using the 1200 wet and dry, it is then fully rubbed down with 1500 wet and dry. Then finally the whole guitar is carefully rubbed down with 2000 wet and dry, this is where the 'sharp' edges of the guitar are very lightly rubbed down..............being very, very careful not to rub through the lacquer and into the paint below. One small mistake here and we're looking at another lacquer coat!

Once the surface has been rubbed down through the grades of wet and dry it's time for the polishing. On this guitar, because it's a large pretty much flat guitar I start using a high speed polisher with a foam mop and 3M 'Perfect It' fast cutting polishing compound. When both faces of the guitar are polished down, then it's a change of mop and a finer polishing compound is used. Finally after another change of mop she is treated to a good going over with an 'anti swirl' polish. By this time she's pretty shiney, but the edges and some of the trickier areas still need doing by hand. On most guitars where the surface is obviously smaller and there's more carving to the front and rear I still prefer to just polish the whole guitar by hand..............far less chance of polishing through the lacquer.

Anyway, at the end of near enough two days rubbing down and polishing we end up with something like this. This has had five wax polishings using Simonez car wax, finished off with at least ten layers of Turtle Wax polish............. and all polished up she looks a treat. Turtle Wax gives a really tough deep shine and helps to protect the lacquer. So there we have it..............job done!

For more and larger pictures of the finished guitar click the image above.

Watch this space........

 

Custom built, custom finished quality guitars - for those that want something 'a bit special'.

 

All artwork and images are Copyright © Jim Fogarty 2002-2007. All rights reserved. All artwork shown on this website is protected by international copyright law. No image on this website may be used for any commercial or non-commercial purposes without prior written permission from the artist.