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Although I still reckon if we all had identical gear, we'd find some new molecular level of minutiae to disagree about
Right... in short yes you can “age” the urethane. Whether it’ll look nice is solely up to you. The rest is just other folks opinions. When urethane starts to weather it usually leaves you with rather ghastly chips which lets you see just how thick the finish is. But if you refrain from going too crazy you can add some surface dings, scratches etc but avoid chips and forearm wear. That is when ageing urethane goes wrong.
We have refinished many 90s strats and the main complaint from the customer is “the finish is too thick”. This is the last one we did although I think it was late 90s
https://i.imgur.com/dGqOeoB.jpg
• Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@Goldeneraguitars
In the areas where mine has chipped, it appears to only be maybe 1mm or so thick, but having had time to reflect on this, I reckon I might just leave it - I'm cack-handed at the best of times, I think I run a very high risk of ruining this completely.
I think I'll just let it weather naturally
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
• Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@Goldeneraguitars
I liked both, the job Rich (Iamf68) did was tremendous, if the guitar plays great and is a keeper then worth having refinished properly by someone who knows what they are doing, SCRelics or Iamf68.
Its a good learning curve refinishing. If I did another I would strip back to wood and nitro or send away to the pro's
do wanna nice thin nitro finish strat though, maybe an AVRI is calling
• Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@Goldeneraguitars
I've refinished and reliced dozens of my own guitars. I'm not selling anything. I love relics and encourage you to make your own. Here's what you need to know.
1. Abandon the idea of making a poly-finished MIM look anything like a CS heavy relic without first refinishing it. Why? Lacquer checking, which is about one-third of the battle for a decent relic.
2. Refinishing a guitar is nothing like a difficult as you'd think, especially if you then intend to age it. With enough preparation, research and caution you can get it right on the first go - and something tells me if you want to relic a guitar you'd probably be up for painting one too.
3. You can shoot nitro over poly, but if you do you can forget about relicing anything other than the nitro topcoat.
4. Credibly ageing a guitar barely involves any sandpaper at all, and not in the way you'd think. You can e.g. use a high grit to flat off a gloss finish before bringing it back up to a more naturally uneven shine. You do not, repeat not, use it to remove paint down to the wood over sharp corners of the guitar body, because that looks like shit. To achieve that you use other tools and chemicals.
5. Relicing a guitar is as much about changing the colour and the texture of the finish as it is damaging it. This is why you want to start with a nitro finish. Nitro is soft and porous and will absorb stain and new colour and allow you to alter its surface properties in a way that polyester will not. You can fake it a bit with polyester but it will never look as good.
6. You also need to think about the hardware, because an old-looking, beat-up guitar with shiny new hardware is a dead giveaway.
7. Give it a go, and even if you mess it up you can strip it and start over. It's a 90s Fender, not an original Vermeer, so don't be precious about it.
8. I've set this one apart because this is the secret that most people flogging their awful homebrew "relics" on ebay don't get. Relicing is not two or three things you do to a guitar in one day. Relicing is about a dozen separate processes, each of which involves hundreds of individual actions, and as such a successful relic job can take you days, even weeks. This is because you're trying to replicate the effect of the guitar being touched, handled, taken in and out of a case, on or off a stand, slightly knocked with rings and jack ends and beer bottles and slightly scratched with string ends and sharp fingernails and picks and belt buckles and so on and so on a gazillion individual times over thirty, forty, fifty years, and exposed to a million hours of sunlight and sharp and less sharp changes in heat and humidity and cigarette smoke and air pollution and a thousand different kinds of dust and dirt, and then the chemicals in human bodies, the oils and acids that seep out of our skins and end up all over guitars, the particles of hair and dead skin... I could go on. And ONLY THEN do you get into the actual damage. You can "relic" a guitar without making a single dent in it. This is why you should refinish your guitar in nitro before you do anything to it. Start with something you know can yield 100% of what you're trying to achieve.