A Little Project I’ve Been Working On…

Here is a little project that I’ve been working on for a while now. Wasn’t much flowing on the Metal news circuit yesterday, so I took the opportunity to work on this Jackson Randy Rhodes V. I bought this early this year for 85 bucks at a Sam Ash. It’s was a bottom line Randy Rhodes V style by Jackson. It ad some dings and chips in the pain and was a bright blue color, but for $85, I couldn’t pass it up.

The first thing I wanted to do to this guitar was put new tuning machines on the headstock to keep it in tune better. I bought some nice Ping tuners and started to drill out the whole wider so they would fit. Cheap tuning machines have a more narrow shaft. The first two whole drilled out just fine, but on the third whole I had this feeling that something bad was going to happen. I’m not psychic, but I kind of had that feeling because the drill bit I was using was kind of dull. Shortly after the bit caught and ripped the headstock off of the neck. I was pissed off at myself, but I got on ebay and found a Mighty Mite (Fender licensed replacement necks, Fender makes Jacksons), with a reverse headstock and the shark-fin inlay. I sanded down the paint, primed it, painted it black and then did the yellow work but used too many layers on the yellow. I clear coated it, but not as much as I should have.

It has been sitting for awhile and yesterday I sanded it down, polished it up ad put it back together. I’m probably going to drop a dime-bucker in there and do some wiring mods to make it sound a lot better. After that I’ll have it set up by a guitar tech to get the intonation and string height set right.

If you ever want to paint a guitar using spray cans, here are a few things I have learned.

• Sand it smooth and fill and dents and dings with good filler. If you strip it down to wood, you will have to ensure that you have a good sealer.
• Prime the shit out of it before applying your first coats.
• If you’re planning to use a layer system to paint a cool pattern, make sure that you don’t make one layer to think.
• Clear coat the hell out of it with smooth thin layers. It may take a while to get a nice thick layer of clear coat so be patient. It helps to have another guitar to play around with so you don’t get too eager finish it too soon.
• After you apply the last layer of clear-coat, let it cure for at least two weeks to ensure that it has a good hard coating.
• Sand out the "Orange peal" effect with a good wet-sand of 400 grit sand paper. from there work your way up to 2000 grit until you have a nice smooth coat. Try not to sand through the clear coat, especially around the edges.
• After wet-sanding, clean and dry the body well. You’ll have a dull shine by now if you took your time and sanded it down nicely.
• Take a clean micro-fiber cloth and apply some car wax/polish (not thick coats and rub it in in small circles). Rub it in once quarter section of the body at a time. You can rub it an and polish this spot and over time you will get a nice almost glass like finish. continue to do this over the entire guitar

This is my next project. I painted this almost two years ago. I’m not sure exactly how I want to paint this yet, but I thought about doing a real Dimebag look to it and have someone airbrush the lightening on it the right was. I did the lightning myself with a stencil I made. It came out ok, but I didn’t await like I should have with the clear-coat and when I applied the hardware it screwed up the clear-coat around the hardware.

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