Mural: Stage 2 - Painting

So the second part of today began with building a jig

or mount to make working on the guitar much more

efficient ... er, possible.

Followed by that was mixing the right shade of blue.

The blue turned out really awesome, making the 

previous "ivory" that appeared "cream" to now appear

as if it was vintage-white, just like I thought. 

The end result for this stage really satisfied me. I was

anticipating a different finished result, but am actually

more pleased with this vintage "summer of '69" feel.

On to the next step. :)

Mural: Stage 1 - Design prep

Here is the finished background. The hue looks cream,
but it's actually "ivory" ... the "cream" looked really
yellow, so this will likely appear as a vintage white in
the end as colors always appear to the eye differently
depending on adjacent hues.

To further document this guitar build, here is 

a pic showcasing the general design layout. You can also

see the design sketch on the paper template sitting
there on the floor. This step was important in getting
the positioning of the stars & stripes to the desired presentation.

By the way, to give credit where credit is due, 

the line template for the Fender Stratocaster that I used,

is Joseph Tubb's custom created guitar template and
can be downloaded for free here: http://goo.gl/gy3MO4

In this picture, you can see where the stars were placed

and where they were cut out prior to washing/drying

to create a finished frayed affected.

Garbage cans make a great place to practice painting.

Perhaps you can tell which of the test strips happened

in which order. I dipped the frayed cloth strips into the

paint, saturating it completely and then removed 

the excess paint by pulling the cloth between two fingers

creating a wringing effect.

The first attempt: 

I placed the cloth strip on the surface of the can lid and tapped my

fingers on the cloth to even it out. I did this only lightly,

because i wanted a natural material imprint to remain.

However, not enough paint was applied to my liking.

The second attempt:

Fresh paint, wrung out. This time, I pressed down more

liberally, but the end result also did not meet 

my desired liking as too much of the background color
was visible. 

The third attempt:

Now in this attempt, there is a significant amount of paint
being left behind when the cloth strip is pulled off the substrate, 

but I'm not gaining the cloth texture effect which I'm hoping

to achieve. 

The fourth attempt:

As you can see in this picture, the cloth strip remains 

to sit on the canvas and after 20-minutes, I will pull it off

and see what kind of texture is left behind now that 

it's had some time to dry.

The fourth attempt: part 2

Well, after waiting the 20-minutes, a random amount of 

time I chose, I peeled off the semi-dried strip of cloth.

To be honest, I think the third attempt gave me

better results.

Compare the third and fourth attempts by clicking on 

this image to enlarge it. Though, the fourth attempt did

leave nice texture, it was too transparent and hit & miss; 

whereas, the third attempt was much more opaque, 

but also showed the texture of the cloth.

So, the solution for this particular project is to 

repeat the approach I used in the third attempt by 

not wringing out as much paint and even more importantly,

rubbing instead of tapping the cloth for an even application.

In the final results, I will provide even more detailed
images to showcase the cloth texturing.

Paint: Stage 3 - BG Color

Well, Lil Bess now has some color.

The background color for this mural is

ivory, which is like an off-white with an

essence of parchment-paper yellow.  

The color, white, was going to be too

contrasting for the artwork.

I applied several thin coats today according

to the instructions and now we wait for

it to cure for 24-hrs ... sand and repeat. 

Paint: Stage 2 - Cavity Primer

Okay, the masked section for cavity priming

which happened in the previous blog post 

is now ready to be removed.

Masking removed and freshly sanded 

with 600g sandpaper to return the surface

back to a smooth surface ready for paint.

Here is the end of the 2nd coat. There are

still a couple of spots that need a bit more

paint, so I'll have to pick up another can 

of spray paint as I've just emptied the last one.

After the final coat of white base/primer, 

I'll be painted it an off-white or muted cream

for the background color. At first, I was

going to use this white as the bg color, but

it would end up too visually obtrusive.

So now, we wait 24-hours for it to cure and 

sand/paint again. 

Wax on. Wax off.

~ Miyagi

Paint: Stage 1 - Primer

Off to the paint room. The grand thing

about this "paint room" is that it also works

as a wood shop, art studio and a place to 

park the car most nights. I think it might

just be the best "room" in the entire house. ;-)

In this picture you can see where I routed out

a cavity for the new battery box. To be honest,

I'm really not sure why battery boxes aren't

standard on electric guitars, because it provides

a wider frequency response and improves 

tonal/sound quality overall.

In this picture, you can see some barewood 

spots where i had to sand out dings and

chipped areas. If you were to run your hand

across the surface, you might not be able

to distinguish their existence.

Coat one of the primer is now drying. 

10-minutes to touch and 1-hour to move,

which at that time, I'll be hanging it elsewhere

to get the car back into the garage, as

the paint needs to cure for 24-hours. 

After it cures, I'll sand it accordingly and 

apply the second coat.

I'm not sure how many base coats 

I'm going to apply yet, but I'll stop when 

it feels right. 

After that, I'll began to paint the mural.

Battery box cavity

Routing out a cavity for the battery box.

Further prepping with braces.

Stage 3: Secondary Prep work

Today, I found some issues that need to be dealt with
on this guitar.

The first one are these two holes for the "float plate"
that mounts inside the rear panel. This guitar, being an
economical guitar, evidently had less "quality control"
before it left the factory, b/c you'd never see something
like this on a high-end Fender. Anyway, these two holes
are not going to be a big issue, because I'm just going to
drill them out and fill them with a wooden dowel rod and
then re-drill fresh holes so that the float is centered properly.

Here is this picture, you can clearly see how out of line

that the float plate mounting holes are with the body of

the guitar.

Now, the three pictures are probably the biggest issue

as there is a crack on either side of the neck mount

on the body. These two cracks only became visible after

the enamel and layer of paint was removed.

Commonly, I would guesstimate that most people would

scrap the project, but if you know what you're doing, 

this can be fixed. Also, this guitar was given to me and

I'm wanting to keep the costs down of buying replacement

parts as I could easily get a new body or neck or whatever

from Warmoth, which is a guitar parts supplier, but this is an

art project, so I'm not fazed. The big money will be in 

the electronics when the paint work is completed.

From what I have learned is that even

a lot of Fender Strat's have pickup jack holes

without a recessed section for the cable. 

This generally isn't an issue, but it's nice to have

room to work with, so I drilled out a bit more.