BUILD IT! PLAY IT! LOVE IT!
Repairing scratches, dents
and chips This month’s Hot Mod is for anyone who wants to make an older guitar look more like new, as Simon Croft explains.
This month I thought I’d change to a different track and introduce some easy ways you can repair damage to a guitar’s finish. Apart from anything else, if you learn some
finish retouching skills first, you’ll be in a much better place when you come to do a full custom finish. OK, I’m not looking at paint spraying techniques but I will show you how to get a smooth and professional-looking finish, even with a brush. Now, I know some guitars look cool with that ‘beat up relic’ look but it doesn’t work for all of them. Don’t ask me why, but non-vintage Les Pauls and all Rickenbackers look best to me when they haven’t got a mark on them – doubly so if
Another reason you might want to repair a dent in your guitar is when it’s to the back of the neck. Whether you’re bothered about the way it looks or not, it’s really annoying if a small accident leaves your guitar with a ‘ding’ to the neck you can feel every time you play it. Let’s see what we can do to fix those problems.
Scratches There’s a product you can buy from car accessory shops such as Halfords called T-Cut. It’s designed for removing scratches from cars but it works on most guitar finishes as well. Basically, you put a small amount on with a soft cloth, then polish it off again using a dry cloth and plenty of energy.
The chips on this Strat are very obvious because the black finish is over pale wood.
they are finished in black. The same can be said of semi acoustics, which can lose a lot of value if they look less than immaculate. There are plenty of other guitars you might prefer not to look ‘beaten up’, including yours!
Caution: Not every modern guitar finish works well with T-Cut, so try it first on a small area around the strap button at the base of the body, to be sure. Although I’ve never seen anything dramatic happen, I have had a problem with a slight residue that took time to buff out using plain-old elbow grease afterwards. Some scratches, such as ‘buckle rash’, are likely to be too deep to remove with T-Cut alone. What you end up with is slightly rounded, nicely polished scratches. The best way to remove those scratches before polishing is to use Wet and Dry paper of around 800-1000 Grade on a soft sanding block, typically made of cork or a firm foam rubber. But for very small areas, such as a dent, I use a mini sanding block made from an old ‘stomp box’ battery with some gaffer tape wrapped round it.
A spirit-based black marker makes fast work of filling in the missing colour
40 3
www.playmusicpickup.co.uk
As the name implies, you can use the paper wet, which helps to stop it clogging. I normally put it in a bit of warm water and a dab of washing-up liquid in a plastic microwave dish. That will give the abrasive paper maximum life – but it’s worth turning it over now and again to make sure there are no build-ups of lacquer otherwise the clogged lacquer will make scratch marks – exactly what you don’t want! Once you’ve rubbed out as many as the blemishes as you dare, T-Cut should bring your guitar back to a decent shine.
Caution:
It is possible to rub right through the finish! Generally speaking, less expensive guitars have thick, glossy finishes, while ‘custom shop’ instruments and acoustic guitars have thin coats of lacquer that you could easily cut down to the wood if you polish too hard.
Dents What’s the difference between a ‘dent’ and a ‘chip’? Let’s say that a ‘dent’ is a blemish you don’t notice from a distance but when you play the neck, or run your finger over the body, you can feel that something has bashed the wood in. We’ll call a ‘chip’ what happens when a similar
Applied layer-by-layer, clear nail varnish fills in the chip
accident has taken a bit of the finish off, so you can see bare wood underneath. The ways of dealing with a dent and a chip are similar but a dent shouldn’t involve any colour matching, whereas a chip usually does. In either case, you’ll need to fill the dip with a
Now I’m applying the same treatment to the other chip on this area of the Strat body
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60