Changing Of The Guard

admin · Post by **admin** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 5:07 pm

While it goes without saying that pickguards are designed to take a beating, sometimes they become unsightly and, for aesthetic reasons may require changing. Short of using professional buffing equipment, is there an effective means of polishing them by hand?

jingle_jangle · Post by **jingle_jangle** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 5:30 pm

Depends on how bad they are. Cracks, of course, will not polish out. Pick scratches will come out with a lot of hand-rubbing, using either NOVUS #2 plastic polish or my old standby 3M Perfect-It III rubbing compound, and a CSCC. The guard should be removed from the guitar and stuck to a table top or flat piece of wood with some double-stick tape. This will allow you to really bear down on it without fear of it cracking.

Squirt a dime-sized puddle of compound onto the cloth and start rubbing--hard. You want to build up some heat here. Keep rubbing in one small area (about 1" X 2") and keep it up until you see results. Then move onto another area.

When finished--Zymol, of course! (What else did you think I was gonna say?)

There is a sort of "semi-pro" rig that I use to polish stuff, that has zero chance of burning and leaves a perfect finish.

It's a big old foam buffing pad (on a Velcro mandrel) mounted onto a 14" drill press. I prefer it to buffing mandrels like Stew Mac sells. It's better and more forgiving than cloth buffing wheels, though it does take a bit longer.

Who cares? Rushing anything is the way to inferior work..

wayang · Post by **wayang** » Wed Oct 19, 2005 6:19 am

Spoken like an extremely rare American...

jingle_jangle · Post by **jingle_jangle** » Wed Oct 19, 2005 4:12 pm

Meejum-well, actually...

wayang · Post by **wayang** » Thu Oct 20, 2005 7:07 am

"If you cut us, do we not bleed?"

admin · Post by **admin** » Thu Oct 20, 2005 7:36 am

As the story goes, there once was a man who thought that he was dead and insisted upon it. Many suitable examples were offered to convince him that he was of the living but to no avail.

He was asked, "Do dead people bleed?" To which he replied, "No!" At this point someone pricked his finger. Blood slowly oozed from of his fingertip. Surely that should be proof that he was alive. His response, "Holy smoke, dead people do bleed."

jingle_jangle · Post by **jingle_jangle** » Thu Oct 20, 2005 1:14 pm

I thought we agreed not to discuss politics.

wayang · Post by **wayang** » Fri Oct 21, 2005 7:36 am

I musta been 'out of the office' for that one...