Singin' the Mustang rescue blues

[the older brother]

I should have posted this a long time ago, but anyway....

This fall/winter I was contacted by forumite Redgaard if I could help him with a Mustang that he was considering buying from another forumite here on the board (Dug or Skip IIRC). I said that I could give it a shot and the deal was set and the Mustang got delivered direct to me from the land of hope and glory..

We discussed what/how to refin it and it ended with that I should give it a go with period correct poly finish. I traced down a two-component poly for it - more about that later.

The guitar arrived safe to the house of Jerker and I took some pics of flaws etc to show for Redgaard (as he actually hadn't seen the guitar he bought yet). Here they are:








etc....

There were some nasty wear/dings at a couple of places - nothing too hard to fix, but the worst was the brush refin on the neck... After I got a closer look at it, I found that the brushed on clear laquer was flaking pretty easy, so I took out some scrapers and fine grit wetsanding paper:

I gently scraped and sanded the entire neck and I got all the goo off, without damaging the decal - had it been a 60's Mustang - it would have been impossible as the decal was fortunately under the finish on this one!

Ready scraped and waiting for polishing:


And done:


To be continued...

[the older brother]

Some pics of the back of the neck after done:



As you see - I did nothing to the original finish - just getting rid of that nasty cheap interior laquer or whatever it was brushed over with. Old dings etc was left as it were.

[the older brother]

The body finish is a different story, as I first got hold of some very non-compatible primer for the poly - the finish curled up and litterary fell off the first round. Thinking it was the colour layer that was the bad part I changed that; re-did with a different brand of colour and when I sprayed the poly clear , the same thing happened again!?!

I stripped it completely the third time around and changed to a primer I had used before and now it all worked. Unfortunately I don't have pics of the fucked up finish, as I forgot to take any , beeing totally frustrated over it... to add is that at this point the outdoor temperature dropped to 20 Celsius below zero and I didn't bring the camera to the workshop these days, as the whole shop was freezing cold.....anyway here are the few pics of the progress that I took:

Primer (I'm not sure if this is actually the bad one or the good one...looked the same though)


Colour coat:


Yeah - forgot to say. Redgaard sent a pic of a cream/banana pudding coloured 70's Mustang (wich I can't find) that he wanted his to be the same colour as.

Here's the final result:


...and in front of my own arsenal:



I learnt to stay away from poly (at least until I get a hermetic spraybooth), as there were a nasty misty layer that stuck on everything in the garage afterwards. Nitro that escapes the spraybooth dries before landing as dust onto other things, so it is easy to just wipe off - the poly stuck hard - especially on plastic parts - so I had to buy me a new pair of protective goggles, for instance.. I also learnt to keep to already known primers.... and not to try to spray finishes in temps way below zero....

That's all folks!

[MattK]

That's textbook work, beautiful result. Another one saved.

[Cymbaline87]

Cool restoration, I how the headstock looks...that brown-ish look screams vintage

[Mute]

And it looks nice in person too. Good work on that one, Jerker.

[dug]

I'm glad you fixed it up. It was a sweet playing stang anyways.

[the older brother]

Ah - it was you who owned it from the beginning, dug - yep, a player that got a little, but well-deserved make-over treatment...

[pulse.]

Really beautiful, well done!!!

[ludobag1]

wonderful

[adamrobertt]

Put some tort on that and get some cream pickup covers!!

[the older brother]

It's a mid 70's Mustang, so the tort cream wouldn't be vintage correct - also you can buy a MIJ Mistang with that colour combo in any GC.... anyway - it isn't my guitar and this is the way Redgaard wanted it.