Grand Angus Project, Part 4: It's all about the depth, man...

I've been a bit busy since my last post, painting away. I had a finite amount of lacquer, and I was desperately hoping that I could complete the colour coats with what I had.

You might recall I was having some issues with my little spray gun? Well, I wasn't about to let that get in my way, so I went out and did about the manliest thing that it's possible to do and bought an air compressor and a gravity fed spray gun!

It. Was. Awesome.

I was spraying away furiously, like some sort of spraying machine, adding layers of lacquer in a desperate bid to get the guitar to take on the desired colour. But, as you can see from the image on the right, even after 3 coats the colour just wasn't deepening.

It was obvious that there wasn't enough of the ColorTone stuff in the lacquer. You could see the red/brown of the combined cherry and mahogany reds, but it was way too faint and just not good enough.

It was time to rethink. I'd used between 2/3 and 3/4 of the lacquer, I'd estimated, which meant I would be looking at a maximum of 2 more coats before I ran out. If I wanted to get the colour I was looking for with the lacquer I had left, I was going to have to increase the concentration of the ColorTone. By a lot.

So that's what I did, dammit! You may recall there were about 40 drops of colour in the lacquer before I started? Well, I added about a million. A relatively even spread between the cherry and mahogany reds, maybe a little bias to the mahogany as the original ratio went that way. I added colour until the mix was almost black in the jar. To the left are the before and after shots.

With a better mix of colour I set about getting the first of what would (hopefully) be 2 coats of a better, deeper colour.

Then I hit an issue. The new spray gun, with the fancy compressor, wasn't spraying properly. The spray was sporadic and thin. Clearly there was a blockage somewhere, and my cleaning job after each usage had been inadequate (to say the least).

It took a while, and in testing used quite a bit more lacquer than I would have liked, but after disassembling the whole spray gun I found and cleared the blockage. Obviously, is was some dried lacquer that was deep inside the gun. I did get a coat on to the front of the guitar, though, while I was struggling with it. The results can be seen below.

The coat I got on the front was a tad heavier than I intended, so rather than spin it around and do the back straight away I decided to lay the guitar down on a workbench with the wet side up to minimise the chance of any runs. I think that was a good move, because the coat on the front ended up looking really nice and quite rich.

Whilst the colour that came out wasn't quite as dark a red as I was shooting for, I'm actually quite happy with the shade. The red is a bit deeper than it looks in the picture, but comparing it to the picture above you can tell how much richer it is than before. I think the flame top is showing up quite nicely. I still have no idea if it's actual maple or not...

On the lacquer front, after doing the first side of the guitar I was still going OK; it's starting to look like I might get 2 full coats. I had done the front a couple of days ago, and tonight hung up the guitar to do the back, the sides, and the headstock.

The back is always a bigger job, at least with a set neck, because you have to do the back of the neck as well. At this stage I had cleaned the gun completely, and as a result the lacquer was flowing much stronger and heavier. This wasn't actually very helpful, and the coat ended up being quite heavy, and began to spot as soon as it hit the wood. It was very tricky, because I felt if I stood ay further back the lacquer would dry before hitting the guitar, and even then it was too heavy.

After every few passes of spray I could see spots forming and excess build up, so I used a rag to lightly pat down the lacquer to try and get rid of it. I dabbed lightly, being careful not to actually wipe, and cleaned up what I could. It seemed to work OK. After I had done the whole back, the sides and the headstock, I took the guitar off the painting rig and laid it dry-side-down on the work bench, and used a rag to tidy up the excessively thick bits that were quite spotty.

This presents me with something of a problem. I have enough lacquer left for 1 more coat of colour, but if it goes on as spotty and heavy as this coat I find it unlikely that I could get a very smooth consistent coat. Ideally I would spend some time figuring out the right settings on the gun and the compressor to get a perfect spray, but I don't have the lacquer to spare.

So that's an issue. If you have any suggestions, feel free to leave a comment.

But as you can see, the colour is looking heaps deeper, and is starting to look more like a proper guitar. I'm pretty happy with the depth, and how it's showing through, and if I can get 1 more clean coat before adding the clear I think it's going to look pretty rad.

'Til next time..