Ouch! .. ding...

[Ric_MEL]

aye, figured -- re: let color coat dry.

and great: use thumb on small square of fine sand paper WET ..

what precisely to use for: clear lacquer. Where to get, ?brand? .. or formulation. etc. I'll need only a tiny amount, but I assume I have to get < ? qty? way more than I hope to ever need!

Thanks Paul!

- Mark

[jingle_jangle]

Honey badger may not care, but we do!

Any good clear nail polish will work, Mark. It's the right consistency for drop-filling, comes with a brush in cap and even a nice bloopy drop will harden fairly rapidly...but keep the fills small and let them harden overnight. Test with your thumbnail for hardness before re-dropping or wet-sanding.

And get some polishing compound to make it shiny before you wax.

[Ric_MEL]

I figure HONEY BADGER does NOT care.. but I do!

cause... It's my Rickenbacker.. !


I thought it might be just more nail polish - clear - but you know what happens to those who assume..

P.S. I previously acquired the obligatory: Scratch-X.. and Zymol..

thanks Paul,
Mark

[jingle_jangle]

I thought it might be just more nail polish - clear - but you know what happens to those who assume..

Mark, honey badger never assumes anything. And, he's bad***!

[Clint]

See, it's catching on already! But Honey Badger don't care.

[Tony Baloney]

This past winter my son accidently put a 3" crack in the upper bought of my Guild d50...which was spotless up until then....

I really wanted to fix the lacquer...but I've grown accustomed to my newly customized guitar...and it don't both me anymore...in fact, it's like a weight lifted off my shoulders...I no longer have to worry about the first blemish....

I wouldn't lose too much sleep over a ding or two...or a crack...just play the guitar and enjoy it...

[Oskar]

It's tough when you take care of a guitar and then notice it's been dinged. I mostly have used guitars and a few, including a Ric 610, look as if they've been through a meat grinder. Fortunately the neck & electronics are in excellent shape. Just the body, like mine, is a bit worn & torn.

I guess if it was my guitar I would certainly consider all possibilities, but in the end I'd leave it alone. I've seen more people try to repair dings and cracks and end up with a pretty lousy looking job. Unless you have total confidence, or have some experience doing this type of repair you may end up making it look worse than it is.

Just my 2 cents worth.

[fireglo67]

If a drummer were to drop one of his tom toms onto your Blue Boy Rickenbacker and take a little chunk out of the edge, I guess one should be looking for some pale blue nail polish to cover the damage?
Before one goes traipsing around all the beauty counters in North East England in search of a likely match in colour, has anyone already done the leg work and found an acceptable colour/brand of polish?

Cheers.
Rob.

[jingle_jangle]

I'd doubt that this is possible.

BB varies according to age and varnish, from the pastel blue we think of, to a light mint green, sometimes on the same instrument. So, even if somebody came up on a match on his guitar or bass, chances are that it wouldn't work on your instrument.

Tip: try to mix yer own, or ask a friend with the appropriate skills to lend a hand.

Remember to use solid (not pearl or metallic) nail varnish. Bright blue, white, a touch of black and a touch of yellow should get you into the ballpark.

[fireglo67]

I'd doubt that this is possible.

BB varies according to age and varnish, from the pastel blue we think of, to a light mint green, sometimes on the same instrument. So, even if somebody came up on a match on his guitar or bass, chances are that it wouldn't work on your instrument.

Tip: try to mix yer own, or ask a friend with the appropriate skills to lend a hand.

Remember to use solid (not pearl or metallic) nail varnish. Bright blue, white, a touch of black and a touch of yellow should get you into the ballpark.

Thanks Paul.

The colour of the guitar is still pretty much close to original and even throughout.
I never thought of mixing my own, I'll definitely give that a go as it gives me more flexibility in achieving a close match.

I'll post some before-during-after photos once I get to work on this.

Many thanks again.

R.

[johnallg]

So the important question here; is the drummer still alive?

[fireglo67]

So the important question here; is the drummer still alive?

Yes he is.
Poor fella sent me a text the next morning saying he hadn't slept a wink.

The whole thing seemed to happen in slow motion.
My Ric was on the stand in the middle of the rehearsal hall, about 8' away from where the drummer was packing up his kit. Somehow his one of his drums slipped out of his hands and litterally bounced across the floor and smacked against the edge of my 330 BB.

Next week all of the guitars go into their cases first.......

[Ivan3000]

I have had nothing but success with the drop-fill method. Sometimes I will use lacquer (for onesies and rush touch-ups) and other times I use catalyzed varnish. I've gotten away from super glue for pre-UV Ricks, as it's much harder than the CV and generally shows traces when buffed. It works well on UV-cured material, which has a surface much closer to the super glue in hardness.

One more tip: There are two things that need be done with a chip down to the maple (and this is a chip, not a ding--dings are small dents in the finish which don't show bare wood). The first thing is to match the color, the second is to provide a glossy protective surface.

You don't have to specifically use nail polish for the maple touch up to get it to look Fireglo. You can use artist's oil or acrylic paints, or even hobby enamels on small chips such as this. You're covering it with waterproof lacquer, so go for something that's easy to mix and easy to match. Oil colors dry the same shade as when they're wet, but acrylics color shift although the reds are fairly close in shade between wet and dry. If you use oil colors (you know, the ones in tubes), you should add a bit of cobalt drier so they set up overnight--otherwise it's a long wait until you can drop-fill with clear lacquer to level the surface.

Lastly--a small chip like this is an easy task compared to something a quarter-inch or larger. The larger the chip or ding, the more difficult the task is to make it undetectable.

When I bought my mahogany 430 back from Kira a few months back, after she'd removed the Tune-O-Matic bridge and replaced it with a proper Rick one, she had filled the extra holes with dowel, and touched up the color with lacquer, then added a bit of matching grain with Prismacolor artist's colored pencils. I couldn't see the patches until I got so closer my eyes wouldn't focus...Kira used to be in the art/antiques restoration biz, so she's the master of small touch-ups, and this unconventional method worked very well.

There are all sorts of ways to skin a cobra. Below, Randall explains. ADULT LANGUAGE WARNING!

I LOVE THAT VIDEO! Alot of people on the RRF seem to know about it.