repairing clear coat checking?
Posted: Thu Mar 15, 2012 2:17 am
Anyway to repair JUST the clear coat if it has a small amount of checking -- without stripping and refinishing the entire guitar?
Not that I'm aware of. Color coats are usually at most a couple of thousandths thick--that's less than a human hair.
Clearcoat is, on average, anywhere from five to twenty times as thick. Sanding off the clear to respray it without touching the color is an exercise in futility and if possible would take longer to do than a complete refinish would. Additionally, in many cases, checking goes through the color into bare wood; it depends upon the relative adhesion properties of the different layers that go into a finish.