Bailed myself out of a guitar finish screw up!

[6down1togo]

Not one my better days!

I picked up a very pretty finished, double-bound Strat body in cherry sunburst (actually closer to the current Gibson autumn-burst color ) and got all the rest of the parts ready the for a build project . After soldering the electronics together and aligning the neck and bridge,  I mounted the neck and tailpiece, made the jack and ground solder connections and proceeded to drill and screw down the pickguard. 2 screws from being finished, disaster struck.

As I mounted the pickguard with my interchangeable bit screwdriver, I lifted the screwdriver to move to the next screw and the bit dropped out leaving a sharp divot in the top. After a few choice words, I commenced with a drop fill repair. I notice the spot where the point hit is bright white and realize the top is photo-flame over ash, not maple veneer, which would explain why the ding was so deep. The finish might have chipped, but maple would not have dented like that.

I mixed some amber and deep red lacquer to color-fill the spot with thinking the lacquer will shrink as the thinner evaporates and I can do a CA drop-fill of the chip and call it good.  I let the lacquer dry and came back to lightly sand with 1200 grit to remove the lacquer edge surrounding the chip. I got done sanding and wiped it down with mineral spirits only to find the spot had gotten larger and now had a white ring around it. I now realized the lacquer must have reacted with (melted) the photo-flame material and now I am really up the creek. I used a stain pen to color the divit and over-filled the divot with CA to cap it off from the lacquer. I shot the top coat of lacquer and got the same result. I drop filled again with CA and after razor blade scraping and fine sanding to feather the CA over the exposed photo-film, there was no finish left. The poly and photoflame were super thin and just sanded away. Had all gone well with the first drop fill, I might have gotten away with it.

I resolved myself to air brushing the area to duplicate the burst and re-spraying the entire top in lacquer. I again mixed some amber and deep red (Mohawk Toner colors) and loaded it in my Badger airbrush and actually hit the color on the first try. I slowly built the color up in light coats which seemed to not affect the photo-film and then narrowed the spray down and traced the burst lines back in. Not perfect, but if you didn't see the before, you would never guess it was repaired. It's all good now. I'll post some pics when done along with the specs.

I'll post some pics and specs when done. I did a push-pull for 7-way wiring (Gilmour mod) and a treble bleed mod n this one which should be pretty cool.

 

Damage after drop filling and sanding:

 

Completed airbrush and top respray: