Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Paul, what medium is the tinted material. Tinted sealer? Tinted C.V.? Some sort of auto-type acrylic? and tinted with what? It really looks great! Can't wait to see it with that thick polished gloss topcoat.

Free Katie! Mind the (sofa) gap!

The tint I make is automotive acrylic clear, tinted with universal automotive tinting colors from my PPG tinting bank.

The AG tint is actually a very dark red-violet. The amber is a mix of clear, transparent yellow ochre and transparent red oxide.

Clearcoat sometime over the weekend, I think.

Stop the presses. Now that is just downright beautiful.

Paul, Was that the black guitar I saw on a previous thread?

The previous thread was in "Vibrola", the tech section of this Forum, and was titled, "1968 335 RESTORATION".

Yes, it was black when I got it to re-do. Under the black car enamel was more black, gray primer, and the guitar had been painted blue over its original finish. The original finish could have been FG or AG; I'm leaning toward FG right now. Somebody stripped it of the original long, long ago, leaving only traces in the control cavity and truss rod rout.

Yeah, you brought that baby back from the dead. I love doing projects like that. I usually get them in the form of statues these days. I was in the screen printing business and before that I owned a statuary.

Holy mama!! That is magnificent work, Paul. The color is beautiful and the burst spot on!

Can't wait to see it polished up with hardware fitted........ trembling at the knees here.....

Truly a work of art, Paul!

Sorry for the confusion Paul. I have tried to merge your previous posts which first began under the Vibrola topic.

No problem, Peter. Would've done it myself in your position...

Today (September 20) I decided that the tint and sealer coats had hardened and shrank enough to permit me to spray the gloss varnish.

This stuff is a high-solids urethane with a relatively low VOC, and after a couple of decades experimenting with PPG's two-component (catalyzing) urethane clears, this is the one that gives best results: 2042. (I might add that it's the latest version of a line that I started using in '86, when it was called 2002.)

I spray color with a SATA jet; a beautifully-made German gun that has a nice smaller nozzle on it so the pattern is very controlled and the atomization excellent.

But when it comes to clear coating, I prefer one of my two Binks M-1Gs, which is set up with a 1.3 mm nozzle and a 3M disposable cup system (less thinner wasted in cleaning). These are really fine guns, made in USA like Ricks. Oddly, they're anodized the color of a certain kids' dinosaur, so this one is named "Barney". (My SATA is anodized green. Yup--you guessed it: "Kermit".)

After three double wet coats with 10 minutes in between (total 20 ounces of clearcoat!), these pics show the result. The clearcoat here has "flashed off" and is actually dry to touch, although still soft. These pictures were taken about a half-hour after spraying. If you look closely you can see the slight orange peel which usually results on flat surfaces, and which will be sanded and polished out in the next couple of days, to yield a perfectly mirrored surface.



That's the tack cloth crumpled on the paint table to the right of my hand...



In the third shot you can see my hula shirt reflected in the clearcoat varnish:



In very bright light, as in a flash picture, the darkest tones of this guitar's burst are a sort of blood maroon. In the fluorescent light of the booth, it looks like a very, very dark red; almost black cherry. In fact, though, once the maple was aged with amber dye, only one other color was applied: the Autumnglo dye which I mixed. All the variations of color you see are a result of the thickness of the AG dye.

Next: color-sanding, buffing, waxing, assembling.

I'll also be making a set of pickguards for this beauty.

Beautiful even without the sanding, buffing, and waxing, Paul!!

That reminds me...... I need a new shaving mirror!!

Yeh and old farts like us aren't able to produce good work any more eh Paul? I would say that you have just harpooned that myth. (inside joke, see the Beatles Forum)

Thanks for sharing, every time I see your work I am impressed even more.

Paul, the color is perfect, just amazing!

That is pretty.