This Cort X6 guitar was originally bought and then painted for my son, just about the time when he discovered that he was actually better suited to drumming!

Anyway..............here we go........

Painting Stages

This Cort X6 is something of an experiment.

This is basically a 'sideline' project and something of an experiment. The original guitar is a Cort X6 which is by design a bolt in neck guitar. The plan is to make it a fixed neck guitar and to see how convincingly it can be made to look something it isn't............a one piece construction guitar. Here the neck has already been glued and screwed into place, screw holes filled, rubbed down and the body primed.

 

The 'Merry Dancers' is the name given by the locals up here in Orkney to 'Northern Lights', or Aurora Borealis.............anyway here we go.

First of all the whole guitar is painted with a very dark blue paint as a base colour.

Then the upper half of the body is painted with a more specialized paint that should help to create the effect I'm looking for at a later stage ...........

Looking almost cool just as it is now, but this will look really effective as the next stages are applied. The next stage is to start filling the design out and giving the desired effect.

Here the pattern of the 'lights' is roughly airbrushed in........

Then the horizon line is airbrushed in............this is generally lighter than upper night sky.

Then the stars are painted in..............one at a time. It would be easy to use a spatter effect through the airbrush for this, but doing that you get all sorts of odd shaped 'spatters' and you have very little control over the size and frequency of the spattering effect. So for this............it just has to be done one at a time with a fine paint brush.

When all the stars are painted in (teatime and a shandy later)..........

The fun bit.........airbrushing in the 'Merry Dancers'.

Here the Northern lights (Merry Dancers) are pretty much airbrushed in as I want them. The background base paints that were painted in originally come into play now and help to create a cool effect. When this is lacquered in, the 'colour changing' characteristics of the base paint (used for the sky area) should really work to bring the effect to life.

Okay, pretty much done here. Roughly airbrushed in the silhouette of some conifers to demark my horizon line and give the whole design some depth. Just need to play about with a few of the stars that got airbrushed over and the artwork on the body is almost finished. Just the back and the headstock to do............ and the jobs almost done.

Okay, having left this overnight and gone back to it.........it started look like it just needed something else to finish it off. So decided to put a camp fire into the scene. Just started off here with the background light from the fire...........

Then added a bit more detail to give it some depth........

And the end result is not too bad...........

The paint in the sky area of this guitar should be quite striking when it's lacquered in, so this little extra detail should help carry the interest around the guitar.

Onto the headstock now, here the 'Cort' logo is cut out of a frisk film mask. Then glue is applied on the lettering............

And silver leaf is laid onto it.............

Right, at this stage I had no great plans to do anything that much on the headstock. But when I removed the mask and just the silver leaf lettering was left, it looked so plain and 'standard' that a change of plan was definitely needed, so.............

The silver leaf lettering was removed, the headstock was re-prepped and the design from the body was continued onto the headstock as a background for the logo.............which will also be a bit more subtle this time. The next step is to lacquer in the paint to seal it, then the logo mask can be applied to the headstock without damaging the paint underneath.

Just a quick couple of piccies after the first lacquer coat. Here the effect of the 'basecoat' paint used on the sky area can start to be seen under lacquer, look at those colours shift...........

When the lacquering process is complete and the finish is polished up, these colours and the effect of the paint will really jump out of this guitar............even after this first coat of lacquer, before any rubbing down or finishing she's looking awesome.............unfortunately, my photography isn't really up to doing the thing justice. The next step is to finish of the headstock...................and then it's just the lacquering stages and this guitar is done.

Okay, here the headstock is once again masked out ready for the logo to be painted in........

The body of the guitar is also rubbed down ready for another lacquer coat..........after some minor tweaks to the paintwork.

Yep, I know...............looks kinda strange here, but this is a combination of a silver metallic basecoat, with lighter blue airbrushed over bits of it, followed by a blue into red into purple flip flop paint and finally very lightly topped off with a bit of a dilute, very slightly bluey white paint on the edges..............just playing about really...........Oh, you'd guessed!

Not sure how this is going to work out as yet............still some playing to do after this is lacquered in..........

Anyway, back to the body. When the first lacquer coat was applied the somewhat subtle shades of the light blue horizon line and the silhouette of the treeline became a little blurred, so here the lower night skyline has been lightened right up and the tree line re-painted in to give it more definition. Of course, once you start playing it's sometimes kinda hard to stop...............so here you can see the start of a lake in the middle ground below the trees.

Worked on a bit more and with a bit of reflection from the camp fire, the subtle effect of the water takes shape.

Just a little fine detail added to the foremost tree with a paintbrush and it's ready for re-lacquering.

Here the guitar has been lacquered in. As you can see once again just a little of the definition in the treeline is lost.............but generally I reckon this'll do the trick.

I really like this guitar.......................

Okay, basically I still have a little playing about to do on the headstock, then after rubbing down this lacquer coat, the final lacquer coat will be applied ready for rubbing down, final polishing and reassembling and setting up.

Okay, back to this project after what seems like an age. Here the final lacquer coat is first of all rubbed down with 1200 grade wet and dry. Although the final lacquer coats are usually pretty smooth they can pick up the odd dust particle, the 1200 grade knocks these down giving a really smooth (though dull looking) surface.

Once the whole guitar has been rubbed down with 1200 grade wet and dry, then it is all thoroughly and very carefully rubbed down again................this time with 2000 grade wet and dry. The 2000 grade basically smoothes down the surface even further, starts to feel silky smooth at this stage.

Then once the whole guitar has been very carefully rubbed down through the various grades of wet and dry, it's time to start on the liquid cutting compounds. Now I've tried a lot of the very expensive and highly acclaimed polishes out there and I've bought the polishers, polishing wheels and assorted mops............... and tried them too, but as yet, I still haven't found a better system than lots of elbow grease, dusters and 'T Cut' for cutting back ready for polishing. It may take me longer to polish one of my guitars completely by hand, but I've not ever polished through an edge on my lacquer yet!

Anyway..........................as happened here, once the surface is starting to get really smooth and the shine is starting to appear, if there are any little marks still left in the surface of the lacquer, they can now be seen. Above is a picture taken through a magnifying light showing one such anomaly that has been rubbed back with 2000 grade wet and dry and is now ready for cutting compound. All a bit of a painstaking process...............but the only way to get close to that perfect finish.

And there we go. The front of the Merry Dancers guitar, all rubbed down through the wet and dry grades and cut back with cutting compound, ready for the polishing to begin.................after the back, sides and neck are all rubbed down first of course!

It was upon turning the guitar over that I discovered that somehow, something small and gritty had managed (despite my best efforts and soft towels) to get underneath the guitar while I was polishing the front. Result?......in the process of polishing the front I had managed to scratch a neat little pattern, roughly 10mm square out of the lacquer on the back of the guitar, which unfortunately was too deep to simply rub out..

Did I swear????........Me???..................................course I didn't.............................much!!!

Anyway, having first tried to re-lacquer this damaged area with the airbrush hoping that this would repair the damage - I had to admit defeat. As you can see above the edges of the new lacquered area just wouldn't polish down to a satisfactory finish........................so the whole of the back of the guitar needs to be relacquered.

Okay, so chunterring and cursing out of the way..............back to business. Here the guitar is totally masked out with the exception of the back, which is now to be relacquered. All looks kinda messy here, as the horns of the guitar were partially rubbed down before the decision to relacquer, but the rest wasn't. Anyway..................one good thing about it was, at least I now had the perfect excuse to play about with the back of the guitar some more, seeing as I had to relacquer it anyway.

Right, going to play about with some more new flip flop paint, well, actually going to try combining two different flip flop paints in painting the OM (Aum) symbol onto the back of the guitar, over a nightsky scene to match the rest of the guitar of course. This needs to be kinda subtle..........................but I think it'll work???

So, first off then, the so far unpainted rear covers are rubbed down with 1000 grade wet and dry to give the paint something to 'key' (grip) onto.

Then some subtle nightsky shades are painted in - and something not unlike the 'Milky Way' (no not the choccy bar Milky Way!) is airbrushed in diagonally across the back of the guitar.

Not the tidiest of workspaces.................but I have been very busy recently....................

Painting yet more stars in!

Here the OM symbol has been cut out of a stiff piece of paper. There are also some other areas cut out here, these are to help tape the loose mask onto the guitar body and keep all the inner mask sections fairly flush to the guitars surface. I didn't want to use a hard mask, i.e.., masking film, as masking film would have increased the chance of my newly applied and unlacquered paint being lifted away as the masking was removed.

Here the mask is being positioned.............

...........................and secured using my 'extra' cut outs.

Then the combination of flip flop paints are airbrushed in....................and yes you guessed it............

More stars are painted in.

Okay, this is where it's at tonight. The rest of the sky detail (more stars!!) has to be painted in tomorrow and then the inevitable tweaking until it looks right. Once thats done the back of the guitar will once again be relacquered which should bring the whole design out........................... and bring the flip flop paint alive!

Right, the last of the stars are painted in............

And it all looks a bit more balanced now though it still looks 'bitty'..........

The next stage is to lacquer this new paintwork in. This should really bring the effect of the flip-flop paints out and the whole image on the back of the guitar should start to work. The idea was that the OM image would not stand out too much in certain lights/angles, but really show out when the light hits it at other angles - this is already happening without lacquer, so hopefully it should really work well under a lacquer coat.

Here the back of the guitar has had another coat of lacquer and is being rubbed down with 1000 grade wet and dry.

Once it is all rubbed down and perfectly smooth............... it's back into the spray booth for another lacquer coat.

Okay, after another two laquerings, the back of this guitar is ready for it's final rubbing down through the grades of wet and dry.................

................and then it will be ready for polishing. I tend not to put up too many pictures of the final lacquering, rubbing down and polishing stages as there really isn't that much to see. It's a very gradual process of applying lacquer, rubbing it back until it's smooth, reapplying lacquer and rubbing down again and again, each time the lacquer coat getting fractionally thicker - but ever smoother - until it's ready for final rubbing down and polishing.

Okay, here the masking tape around the side of the guitar is removed. This leaves an edge where the new lacquer overlapped the masking tape.

This has to be very carefully rubbed down first with 1200 grade wet and dry and then with 2000 grade wet and dry........

It's very easy to go through your lacquer coats and into the paint below working on these sharp edges. Going thgrough to the paint would mean another re-lacquering at the very least.

So the process is very slowly and carefully done all around the masked edge.

Once the edges are all smoothed down, then the newly applied lacquer on the back of the guitar is rubbed down with 2000 grade wet and dry.............

And then cut back with liquid cutting compound.

Once the whole guitar is cut back, finally the final polishing can begin.

And the guitar is starting to look good.

I've added far more pictures than I usually would of the latter stages of this guitar to show something of what is involved in the finishing of a guitar.

The time spent actually painting a guitar like this is only probably at most, 30% of the of the time taken to custom paint and finish the guitar, the other 70% is taken preparing, rubbing down, basecoating, lacquering, rubbing down between lacquer coats and finally polishing. The final rubbing down and polishing stages taking up to two days to complete.

This maybe gives you some idea why custom paintwork seems so expensive.....................

But here, from my point of view, the effort was worth it................

And the experiment with the flip-flop paints was a definite success. Unfortunately trying to capture the effect with a camera is difficult for an amateur snapper like me...................almost as difficult as getting piccies before the dust is attracted back to the surface of the guitar!

So next stage.....................putting all the hardware back into her........................and then some proper phots!

The finished result.

 

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