Original 1950's Les Paul Junior

[oipunkguy]

[oipunkguy]

I'm a little on the fence if I should sand it out more to get the wood color a more even tone and leave it as as. because if I leave it as is my hope is the lack of a uniform mahogany color in the wood when show through after I'm done finishing the guitar would (i hope) appear to look more vintage. in other words I don't want the wood to look too perfect because then it might come out looking too much like a fresh finish.

[oigun]

Just make sure all the lacquer is gone, then it will take the new finish more even. Give it a wipe with thinner so that most lacquer residue is dissolved or evenly spread. Use sandpaper sparingly in this stage if you don't want a new guitar. YMTC
Man you have cool projects!! I envy you!

[oipunkguy]

I'm sure I'll have more to do at another time. the coolest thing to me is before i worked on the 55 p bass it just sat in closet to get dusty. now someone can play and enjoy it. we do plan to replace the parts on this JR with old 50's parts. so hopefully with some luck it will appear very close to original.

[rynaro]

NICE! i think every guitar looks better with spiderman on it!!
i always love seeing stuff like that because its a user history stuck onto the guitar

[oipunkguy]

It's been some time since I added to this post. here's what I got when I sprayed the JR with TV yellow. the paint is a lot brighter fresh out the can. there's a few tricks I did to get it to look more vintage. after the paint died. I rub the paint out using steel wool to soften the look some. after that I added dark mahogany grain filler ON TOP of the paint and let that dry. then sanded it lightly and added a thin coat of tv yellow on top of that followed by a wee bit of fender blonde and tinted clear. after that I just waited for the mahogany color of the wood to bleed through some, making a point to let direct sunlight hit it during the day. the result looks a lot more convincing. I'll take some pics soon and post them. I have a thin coat of clear on it now, but I'm going to add more.

[oipunkguy]

here's some pics of the junior the way it looks now. the tv yellow has darken quite a bit.

[oipunkguy]

[oipunkguy]

[oipunkguy]