Sunburst Finish

[jingle_jangle]

His name, Aitch, was Allen, and he was looking for a way to apply anesthetic to the back of a patient's throat.

He invented the atomizer in 1888, which was rapidly adopted by the perfume industry. The principle was then adapted to use in for furniture, industrial, and automotive use.

Do you have an Arbnold-DeVilbiss company in Oz, Howard?

If so, it's one of those international partnerships. We don't have them here. Interstingly, the DeVilbiss Medical Products company here is completely separate from the paint spray device manufacturer...

[ozover50]

We did back in the 60s and 70s, Paul. It may have been a coming together of two companies for sales purposes - perhaps Arnold compressors and DeVilbiss spraying equipment. I'll look into it a bit further.

Certainly DeVilbiss is considered very fine equipment here.

Update: Interesting! Arnold manufacture spraying equipment as well.

[soundmasterg]

I've had an old style LVHP DeVilbiss sprayer for the last 5 years or so that I got at a garage sale in California while on vacation that was brand new/never been used in the box and was from 1980. Only paid $5 too, and it works great for spraying guitars.

Paul, if you used dye on the top of a guitar, before clear coating it with lacquer, could you use a lighter dye in the middle, and then mix up some darker dye of the same color and put that around the edge like a sunburst would be done? Or would that look bad, or be too hard to do with any accuracy unless you sprayed it on? Say something like a two tone green?

[jingle_jangle]

Greg, I'm not familiar with the rig that you describe, but if it works, that's all that counts. There are many different hardware setups that work and to detail them all would take a book...It would be cool if you could post a pic of this spray setup, though...

The method you describe, if I'm reading properly, is one of several different time-tested ways of doing a 'burst.

Accuracy, as you describe it, is something that comes with time and practice.

[soundmasterg]

Paul, the DeVilbiss I have is just your regular old style JGA suction feed sprayer, as opposed to the modern HVLP style. I thought the old style sprayers are LVHP (low volume high pressue for you neophytes out there) but maybe they don't refer to them like that, or maybe I'm wrong? Anyway, the price was right!

Regarding the dye on a guitar top, I wasn't sure if it is easily done when rubbing on the finish rather than spraying it on when trying to do a sunburst, because I've not done any sunbursts yet.

[jingle_jangle]

Ah, RUBBING!

Jeez, Greg, you didn't mention that in your post above, so I just assumed you were going to spray it!

And you know what they say happens when you assume something...

If anybody has ever done a good job on a sunburst by rubbing the darker color on over a lighter base coat, I've yet to hear about it. Spray is the way.

I have a JGA in my "arsenal" at my shop/studio in Brasil. I used it a lot between roughly '75 and about '88. It's a standard-sized suction-type spray gun, used in auto body shops and in industrial finishing applications. This is what it looks like:



If it's properly maintained and kept clean and lubed, it can be dialed in to do beautiful sunburst-type finishes.

The SATA I use, called a JET, is an HVLP and looks like this. These guns have just about taken over the market in California, because of the HVLP thing, which reduces overspray by a lot (some say as much as 70%). Here's a SATA JET:



As far as I know, guns were never called LVHP. The HVLP moniker was applied to explain the main point of difference of the new ones when they were introduced.

To lay down your base (lighter) color, you should have a 1.3 or 1.4 nozzle on the gun. Anything smaller won't put out paint in sufficient volume. The air pressure should be at about 25 PSI. Car painters use 35-45, and most instruction sheets on these guns quote the higher numbers; that's for larger areas. Go with the 25. Sometimes I'll even dial it down a bit from there!

Open up the fluid needle a turn and a half, and open up the spray pattern to about 1/3 of the way between smallest and WFO. Readjust the fluid so you can hold the gun at about 4"-6" from the guitar's surface, and move it steadily at about a foot per second (seems fast, but it's slooow, really; try it with a friend counting!).

Devise a plan for spraying the guitar. On thin solid or semi-solids, I always spray edges first, holding the guitar by the neck midway up the fretboard, which is masked off. Then I'll paint the back of the body, put the gun down (I have made several wall hanging brackets for my booth), flip the guitar over, and paint the front. Then I flip again and paint the back and edges of the headstock (on Ricks I paint the headstock front at this time, too). The neck remains unpainted, and I have a specially-shaped stiff hanging wire hook which hangs from a cable in my booth. This is inserted into the "D" tuner hole from the back. Once the guitar is hanging, I paint the area of the neck which my hand covered, blending it into the heel and headstock.

Now for shading...

[jingle_jangle]

And, BTW, the JGA now comes in an HVLP version, too. It's a matter of relocating the cup and redesigning the nozzles.

[soundmasterg]

Thanks Paul! My dad has a HVLP gun that he used to paint his airplane a couple years ago. I haven't tried it yet, but could use it if I had to.

Regarding two tone dye on the guitar....if you spray it on, does it penetrate as deep as if you rubbed it on? I was thinking the analine dyes that you can get from people like Stewart Mcdonalds and others that are water or alcohol soluable? I used some of that on this guitar that I did for my uncle, and sprayed nitro clear on top after the dye had dried. But I rubbed the dye right into the wood with a rag on this one.

[jingle_jangle]

...a bit more difficult to get a smooth transition with a rag. That's why everybody uses spray guns.

My own trick in sunbursts (in the case of a Rick-type burst) is to use tinting colors dissolved in acrylic (not nitro) clear, then scuffed and topcoated with two-pack polyurethane. Color sanding and hand and wheel-buffing completes each job. Dye works, too, but be sure you seal the guitar thoroughly before applying the dye with a spray gun, and go easy.

I teach about 200 (yes, 200) college-aged students how to use a spray gun each year. Probably the most important point I make out of many is this:

The gun is your tool. Do not let the tool set the pace. Don't let it get ahead of you. Adjust the paint flow and pattern so that you are setting the pace, and never rush. If you feel rushed, stop and figure out why. Nine times out of ten it's that the gun is opened up too far.

[winston]

This is great Paul.

The reason I have not been butting in is because you seem to anticipate my next question and deal with it. That is your teaching experience and vast knowledge of your subject that is coming into play!!!!

Incredible. Many thanks.

[jingle_jangle]

I'm happy that this is of use to the DIYers and potential DIYers in our Rickenbacker group.

As Dale Fortune has shown us in his excellent recent series "Building a Solid Body Guitar", although it takes a fair amount of preparation and experience and a pretty good assortment of tools, building a guitar is not a black art.

Finishing a guitar is only one small part of building one. The same goes for refinishing as for building or finishing--there's no magic, only the desire to learn and a bit of hard work until you're over the hump and have completed your first project. Then, if the passion still remains, it gets better and better. I'd comment that the thing to remember is to see the whole thing as a systematic process which can be endlessly replicated with variations.

The most fun for me, since I've had the process down for quite a few years, is imagining new colors and trim options, and mixing the colors and experimenting with new and old replica "looks". Whether the project is mine or a friend's, the joy is the same.

Then there's the fun of trying out a new type of paint, or a new gun, or...

[soundmasterg]

Paul, you said previously:

Dye works, too, but be sure you seal the guitar thoroughly before applying the dye with a spray gun, and go easy.

If you seal the wood first, then does the dye penetrate as well as if you don't? You wouldn't think it would get that lusterous deep look like a PRS gets if you seal the wood first?

[mikeylc]

A PRS dye job is usually a two step process. The dye is applied to the wood and then sanded back. The dye or a second color is applied again to give the dye dimension. It really depends on the look you are trying to go for. Something with a lot of figuring like quilted or flame maple looks good with the previously mentioned method.

[mikeylc]

As for you guys who might want to try this at home, check out this site - www.reranch.com They sell nitro paints in a spray can and a nice refinishing forum as well. They even sell a couple of sunburst kits. I haven't tried the kits and they are not for the first timer but there are some examples in the gallery of some nice jobs done with a rattle can.

[jingle_jangle]

Let's take this in order:

There are two major types of dyes available commercially. These consist of a solvent and a colorant. The solvent's only job is to assist the colorant to penetrate the wood and then to disappear by evaporation. The dyes available are alcohol-based, and water-based. Both raise the grain of the wood and require sanding-back and re-application for best results. Both penetrate the wood and can be applied by brush, rag, or spray.

But, remember, this is Rick Forum, and I will tend to address Rickenbacker methods first. That having been said, the methods used by PRS, Fender, Gibson, Gretsch, et, al., could be used on a Rickenbacker guitar; they just might not give the results you are after.

The dye which I refer to, is the mix that I make from acrylic clear--the same material that I use as a sanding sealer--and universal colorants. It is not a penetrating dye, but one with some body which is meant to go on over a sealer and to tint the wood grain, but not to penetrate it. An automotive painter would call it a "candy" color--it's nearly transparent until about five or six coats are built up, at which point it begins to obscure the grain a bit. It is a similar material to Rickenbacker's custom formulation, which is made for them by their supplier.

PRS uses aniline dyes to achieve their odd effects. Not too subtle, I think you would agree. (My favorite PRS--and I'm not a big fan of the sound, so I'm talking appearance here alone--is the gold top McCarty. That should tell you something.)

Fender, Gibson, and Gretsch all use the method I describe of tinted semi-transparent colors over bare wood or basecoated wood, to get their sunburst effects.

Now on to Reranch, who, as I mentioned previously, is a supplier who many amateurs swear by, because they package the materials up in spray cans, which eliminates the need for relatively expensive spray equipment. But what it really does is remove the amateur's fear of spray guns and gives him instead a less-controllable way of putting on a coat of paint.

It used to be that, before you could spray a guitar with any success, first you had to locate the proper products. (nitrocellulose was the way to go back before about 1985 or so). Nitro is not a hobby or home center or hardware store item, so it was difficult to find in any colors but white, black, or clear, whether in bulk quantity or spray cans.

Then you had to buy or rent a spray gun and compressor. Buy: several hundred dollars. Rent: you usually got dirty, ill-maintained equipment recently returned from Jed Clampett, who used it to reshoot the ol' Case combine and rinsed it out with gasoline before returning it to the rent-it center.

No longer true. A decent siphon-type touchup gun--a copy of the old Binks 15/115 which looks like this: