EXTRA ONLINE RESOURCES
Soaking your Wet & Dry paper in warm water with a little washing up liquid will help to prevent it from clogging
liquid material that will go hard and you can then polish down, until it looks and feels exactly the same as the surrounding finish. Depending on the exact problem, I normally use either Superglue, or nail varnish. Before you start applying either of these products, it’s a good idea to take a look at the ‘ding’ and think about preparation. Degreasing the surface is a good idea because it will help whatever you apply next to form a
You need to tilt the neck before filling with Superglue – otherwise it will run everywhere
Caution: Superglue and similar products will glue your fingers together better than anything! These glues can also make a mess of your guitar’s existing finish, so be careful to mask off areas you don’t want any glue to land on. Also, prop up your guitar so that the bottom of the dent is the lowest level, otherwise the glue will run straight out and all over the place! Eventually, you should get to the point where
I use an old battery from an effects pedal as my sanding block, with some gaffer to keep sharp electrical contacts away from my guitar
good bond. Cleaning agents you can use include lighter fuel, mentholated spirit, or switch cleaner. Whatever you use, I suggest you put it onto a cotton bud, then dab carefully it into the damaged area, in case it has a reaction with the existing finish. To fill dents in guitar necks, I prefer to use
Superglue, because it sets very hard. If you rub it down carefully afterwards, you should never feel that dent again! On the downside, Superglue was never designed to set in air (it was actually designed to glue flesh together as a rapid substitute for surgical stitches in war zones). As a result, if you want to fill dents with Superglue, you will need to put in just a couple of drops at a time, then let that dry before you put in a little more. This process may take hours, or days. Also, I’ve found that Superglue can look a little
milky once it’s hardened. It may be that there is an optimum temperature to get a clear finish but – sorry to say – I don’t know what it is.
the glue infill is slightly above the surface of the surrounding finish. This is when you can start to rub it level, before polishing. On the back of necks, I find the sort of emery board my missus uses on her nails to be quite useful, because I can curve it slightly. That said, unless I’m totally confident I’m rubbing down the glue and not the surrounding areas on the neck, I’ll normally wrap some Wet and Dry paper of 600-800 around the board. Otherwise, those boards are too abrasive for the job.
Once you’ve got the glue area level, it’s out with the T-Cut, unless you are working on a matt finished neck.
Even though we’re using pre- made parts on this phase of our guitar-modifying project, there are several extra details I’d like to share with you that there just isn’t room for in the magazine. So if you’d like to see a lot more tips and tricks that can make the difference between an OK guitar build and one that knocks yer socks off, please visit the web site for the videos and PDFs I’ve put together.
www.playmusicpickup.co.uk
over a colour you’ve applied first. The Rickenbacker on-line forums tend to claim you can’t fill in colour with a felt-tip pen, then varnish over. Wrong! I’ve used a Sharpie or similar spirit-based felt-tip to fill in the black on a number of Ricky basses, finishing the job off with nail varnish. (A Rickenbacker-approved touch-up technique.) What’s great about using a black felt-tip is that it’s really easy to clean the colour off the binding, so you know everything’s going to look neat before you put the varnish on. The technique for filling in a chip with nail
An emery board designed for fingernails is a useful sander, because you can curve it away from areas you don’t want to touch. Wrap it in Wet & Dray paper for a finer cut
This neck dent doesn’t go through the finish but you can feel it when you play
Chips There is a vast selection of small coloured and clear varnish containers like the nail varnishes you can buy in the chemists that are absolutely magic when it comes to finish repairs. There is a deep red varnish my wife has been using for years. I don’t know what it’s called but to me it’s ‘Gibson SG touch-up.’ The best way to get a really accurate match is to take your guitar in-store, then go through all the cosmetic ranges, comparing. Some matches will be better than others. For chips the size of pinhead, you don’t have to be that accurate but I’d recommend you to take care when patching larger areas. You don’t have to get a varnish colour match for your repair, though. You can use clear lacquer
varnish is about the same as Superglue but you can often go at it a bit faster. For one thing, you don’t always have to clean the chip area, unless there is noticeable discolouration to the wood. There is so much solvent in the varnish, it will clean out the chip area itself. Nail varnish dries really quickly compared to
Superglue. However, it dries by evaporation, so it’s a good idea to apply small layers, waiting for each one to dry before applying the next. Good luck! PM
You can hardly see the dent. More importantly, you can’t feel it at all.
www.playmusicpickup.co.uk 441
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