Painting a 'relic over' body

matt.drink73

Ey up, I'm hoping the more technically minded amongst you might be able to give me some advice on an upcoming paint project I fancy trying.

I'm looking to respray a Jagstang body from daphne blue to a black over shoreline gold relic kinda vibe. I want it to wear naturally so at the start it'll be mostly black, and then as I gig it and throw it at stuff it'll wear through to the gold and eventually the wood so it looks natural.
My current plan is to sand the blue back to bare wood, throw a few coats of gold on, a few of black when that's dried and then a thin nitro coat after that. Does anyone have any recommendation about the thickness and number of coats?

I'm fairly good at DIY and I tend to do a lot of work on my guitars but I've never painted one before, am I missing anything glaringly obvious?
Ta

SteveRobinson

The most important thing is preparation, even for a relic. You need to sand the wood to 320 grit or so and then seal it well using sanding sealer to provide a smooth base for your lacquer. 

Apart from that your plan seems like a sound one. I think you'll have to lay a decent thickness of the gold on there so that you get the reveal effect. To thin and you risk not seeing the gold transition.

matt.drink73

Cheers! I'll let you know how I get on!

munckee

matt.drink73 said:

Cheers! I'll let you know how I get on!

I painted mine with 4 coats (I think) of spraypaint and 3 layers of clear poly, managed to go through the poly and paint while sanding with 1200 sandpaper while dulling the finish a few weeks ago, which was how I intended it.