Stage 6 - Clear Coat
MMkay... It's roughly 36 hours after my 2nd coat of the black gloss has had time to sit, and I'm ready to sand it down lightly with 320dry and apply the clear gloss lacquer, (many coats). I will use the same clear gloss for the black finish as I will for my stained blue veneer top. |
| As you can see from this pic, the shine is gone, and it has been sanded down with 320 dry. This was to remove all of the little lint balls and what nots that landed on the black as it was drying. Most of them can be lightly blown off, but some do need to be sanded out. Don't freak out that your high gloss has disappeared, and think that your paint is ruined. The clear gloss will bring the shine right back. Don't worry about completely sanding the whole thing here, in fact, you don't want to do that... just any stuff that appears to be obnoxious. You will be sanding a lot during the clear coat stages. And yes, I realize two of the neck bolt holes are white. You won't see those when the neck bolt ferrules are put back on... Moving on... =) | |
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| After sanding with the 320, I applied a very light coat of clear over the entire body. I let this dry roughly 15 minutes, and then sprayed a wetter, heavier coat. | |
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| Here is with the second coat of clear applied. I then sprayed one more coat to bring the high gloss back. It's going to be dry sanded after this anyways, so it won't be totally flat... it will appear lightly "textured". I say textured, and not "orange peel" because there is a big difference between the two. If you have wicked orange peel going on, you will need to sand with a 220 to remove all of that and reshoot. |
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| Second coat of clear is almost done, I resprayed another light pass after this. As you can see, the "shine" is back and the dullish/grey sanded black areas were made glossy again after applying the clear coats. I am going to let this dry for 24 hours, and then level sand it with 320 dry and repeat the whole process about 4 times. |
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| I will end up with roughly 6-8 double coats of the clear nitro gloss lacquer before the back and sides are completely finished. The bummer part is, I am going to have to wait about 2-3 weeks while it cures before I can do the FINAL buffing and polishing to make it REALLY shine. The good news is that I can start my veneer top and will buff and polish this bastard all at the same time. Nitro is a wonderful substance, but definitely takes a lot of time to cure... |
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Evolution...
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| OK. I let the body dry for about a week, and then sanded it down with 400grit FRE-CUT (non-loading) sandpaper. I also bought a very very cool pliable, bendable sanding block which made my life a lot easier. Here is a shot of the sanded flat after 3 double-triple coats of clear. The shiny bits you see are the low spots that will be filled in with my 5,000,000 coats of clear lacquer |
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| Here you can see the sides of the body where my pinstriping/binding tape was. It came out killer. Nice tight binding line all around. Going to be rad when I finally get the veneer top in, sometime in the year 2004 it would seem. =) The sides are not level sanded yet. |
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| Another angle so you can see how the binding tape worked out. It was autobody pinstriping tape from Checker Auto Parts. It was 1/8" diameter which was the perfect size for this body. |
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| This pic shows the body after the next clear coat, after flatsanding with the 400grit fre-cut. Absolutely be sure to use fre-cut sandpaper, it will save you MEGA amounts of time. This biatch is REALLLLLY shiny right now. The pics do it no justice whatsoever. The binding looks great.. |
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| Another angle, showing the back, and the binding from the top view. Wicked looking. I could comb my hair in this thing right now, but its not even close to being done. After this coat dries for 24 hours, I'm flat sand the body again with 400 then 800grit paper and shoot another coat of clear. |
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| And yet one more shot. I will add a few more pics after this coat dries, and take a pic of the body when its sanded flat with 800grit, and that should be the end of this section. Today is 1/19/03. By 1/22/03 I expect to have the FINAL clear coat on, and then will wait about 2-3 weeks before I do the final mega mega fine grit sanding, buffing/polishing. After that... I will add the quilted maple top, do the staining, and then get to repeat this whole process all over again. =) |
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