Grand Angus Project, Part 3: The right tool

Part 3 of this series will cover the prep for painting and the first coat of paint. Before I could start painting I had to come up with a way to protect the area where I was painting from over spray. Ideally I'd have a booth to paint in, well ventilated and sturdy, but I don't have the space, so instead I made the decision early that it would be a temporary structure that could be taken down/put back up when necessary.

I decided to go with a drapery type thing suspended from the ceiling. I got a long piece of PVC and a couple of corner pieces from Bunnings, cut up the long bit and made a U-shape for a frame. I kept a longer fourth piece as a cross beam that would be used to support the guitar. A couple of screws on the of the short pieces act as a guide to stop the cross piece sliding all over the place, and a couple of screws on either end of the cross piece stop it slipping through the middle. Genius, right?! 2 coat hangers suspend the guitar from the cross piece.

A sheet of painter's plastic taped around the edge hangs down to provide protection from over spray, and string is attached to all 4 corners meeting at a keyring directly above the cross piece. It's closer to the front than the back to sit above the guitar, making it nice and level when the guitar is suspended. It sits a little awkward when there's no guitar on there, because the weight is predominantly at the back, but that's no big deal.

So, the painting rig is done. Before I can actually paint, though, I want to get rid of any loose grain. I rubbed the guitar down lightly with water to raise the loose grain, and then lightly sanded the whole thing with fine grit sandpaper; maybe 1200-1600 grit. Nice and smooth!

Now I need some paint! Well, I'm not using paint per se, but lacquer. I was going to paint with regular paint and then coat it with clear lacquer, but ended up deciding on tinted lacquer instead. I ordered a pint of water based spraying lacquer from StewMac.com and 2 bottles of ColorTone liquid stain; 1 cherry red and one red mahogany.

I emptied the whole can of lacquer in to a jar and started adding drops of ColorTone, testing now and again on a piece of scrap wood. The photo to the left shows the first test mix - 6 drops of cherry red, 12 drops of red mahogany. I wanted a darker red, but with a bit of the cherry to brighten it up. I sprayed a test of that mix and it was too weak - almost clear - so I added more ColorTone. The final mix was 25 drops red mahogany, 17 drops cherry red.

With that done, I loaded up the little hobby spray gun I bought a while ago in preparation for this project. Things started off well. Before hanging it up on the rig, I held it myself and painted the edges and back of the headstock, because those bits would be hard to get to once it was hanging up.

My spray gun is tiny, but the paint pot is even smaller. The first pot got through 1 pass of the headstock and most of the neck. Obviously this was going to be a bit of a pain in the arse. What made it a major pain in the arse was when the gun stopped spraying. That happened on the third pot.

I assumed the nozzle that feeds the paint was clogged, so I took it apart and cleaned it. That didn't help. Next I took the whole feeding mechanism apart and cleaned that, but still it wouldn't spray cleanly. Later I found a tiny hole that is presumably used to feed air in to the paint pot, so I cleared that hoping it might make it flow, but it still wouldn't flow cleanly.

In the end, I managed to complete 1 pass; not even a full coat. It was frustrating, although I'm reasonably happy with the consistency of what I did get done. What's also annoying is that 1 pass used almost my entire can of propellant, so even if the gun starts working again I'll likely only get half another pass before needing another can. So, do I get another can of propellant and hope the gun starts playing nice? Or do I bite the bullet and go buy an air compressor and a more appropriate gun? Still haven't decided yet.

It was about this time I realised my mistake; I'd used the entire can of lacquer, meaning that there was no clear stuff left for the clear coats at the end. No big deal though, I wasn't expecting the 1 can to get through the whole project. I'll order some more soon. A bigger can.

The photos don't show it too well, but the colour is a brownish red, consistent with the 2 different ColorTone tints used. If I'd been able to finish the coat the colour would be darker.

That's where it's up to at the moment. Tomorrow or the next day I'll probably run some sandpaper over it lightly, but mainly I'll be deciding how to approach the rest of the painting, because at the moment it's fairly evident that I don't have the right tool for the job.