Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Paul or anyone familiar with working with Conversion vanish.
Can Conversion Vanish be carefully buffed out? Lets say you have a scratch in the conversion varnish finish relatively shallow and not through the finish.
Can you work the scratch out carefully smoothing and buffing to relately smooth and shiny again. I've had good luck on some finishes by working from 1000 paper to finer by hand then buffing out to a pretty nice shine - but can you work conversion vanish like this? Or a technique similar?
Thanks for some insight on this.

Anyone?

Of course. This is the longest and most physical part of any Rick restoration, even with power tools...It may take me a few days to strip a Rick, sand it, seal it, and apply color and lots of CV, but the sanding flat (which I call "flatting") takes hours and hours to do correctly. If you don't do it, you'll get a glossy finish, but close-up it will be filled with ripples and have the occasional dust speck. There is no finish to rival a hand-rubbed one, for visual elegance.

You can use 1000, but if you're going to be buffing by hand, may I suggest #2000 following the #1000. The BEST compound I've found (and this was only last month, when I updated my supplies) is 3M Perfect-It 3000. Be sure to use a diaper or, if you can't find one, a nice cotton T-shirt. Diapers make a world of difference where rubbing-out is concerned. I cut a nice, soft, recycled cotton diaper into 4" squares for application of the Perfect-It, and there's no substitute for elbow grease, so buy a big can...

When the CV is nice and glossy (my standard for comparison is GLASS...if it's not like glass, you're not done), you can then use another of the squares for applying Scratch, and a third for Zymol. You should probably wear sunglasses for these last two steps...

Thanks Paul for the direction. Greatly appreciated.
I've got a area on the headstock that I want to work on after getting the tuners and Truss rod cover off.