What you'll need:
1. Gold Gibson Style knobs
2. a fresh razor
3. Chromium Oxide green acrylic paint (Amazon: £4.99)
4. An art type paint brush - cheap is good.
5. a bag of gravel/nuts/bolts/metal bits or an area outside with gravel/pebbles etc
Some extra tips:
1. I scraped all of the edges - top of the knob and the bottom - with the razor and did the same around the inside edge of the silver top surface of the knob.
2. Used my clean paint brush to paint the top surface with some amber water based stain and some brown scratch repairer I had lying around in a cupboard. Really any water based brownish stain will do. Let that dry and then used a damp cotton bud to pull off most of that with some of the residue getting stuck in the scratches around the edges to give that "old timer, much used gunk" vibe.
3. A hairdryer speeds up the acrylic paint drying process a heck of a lot
Amount of time to complete the job: 10mins plus drying time
Here's a link to walk you through the process and pics so you can see the finished knobs on my LP Standard.
Enjoy...
http://youtu.be/UFOVQ7NgFog
Comments
https://sixstringsupplies.co.uk/
Our YouTube Channel for handy "How-To" Wiring Tutorials
Btw here's some extra tips I'll add to the OP in a sec:
1. I scraped all of the edges - top of the knob and the bottom - with the razor and did the same around the inside edge of the silver top surface of the knob.
2. Used my clean paint brush to paint the top surface with some amber water based stain and some brown scratch repairer I had lying around in a cupboard. Really any water based brownish stain will do. Let that dry and then used a damp cotton bud to pull off most of that with some of the residue getting stuck in the scratches around the edges to give that "old timer, much used gunk" vibe.
My Trading Feedback can be found here: https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/62765/bad-alice/p1
When we first started trading in 2014 I spent hours and hours relicing strat plastics and nickel hardware but 50% of them looked great and the other 50% looked appalling (ie not it for sale) so decided to exit the relic/aged parts market very early.
https://sixstringsupplies.co.uk/
Our YouTube Channel for handy "How-To" Wiring Tutorials
I have tried green paint before, but not got it looking as natural as yours, i think i scraped too far through the gold
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My Trading Feedback can be found here: https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/62765/bad-alice/p1
If you want to provide an item that doesn't seem to be available anywhere in the UK, or Europe for that matter, it might be worth trying your hand at creating aged clay inlay dots? You'd be providing an exclusive service that us relic nuts would be metaphorically queuing round the corner for! I'm having a 62 type Strat built for my birthday in January next year, and ended up having to order a set all the way from Muricaland. I'd imagine once you've nailed the colour and consistency. It would be relatively easy to knock out sets of those?
My Trading Feedback can be found here: https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/62765/bad-alice/p1
My Trading Feedback can be found here: https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/62765/bad-alice/p1
Btw those dots look terrific and the jig is a terrific idea.
<applauds>
My Trading Feedback can be found here: https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/62765/bad-alice/p1
I'm sure that while clay being great as a DIY project, the Fender dots were cut out from vulcanised fibreboard (like old linoleum).
https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/160061/fender-custom-shop-no-more-clay-dots/p1
https://precbsstratocasters.com/vintage-fender-clay-dots/
for black dots , many people seem to use clay though for the off white.
The material was also used for old poker chips. It can be a little bit difficult to work in its old brittle poker chip form, but makes a great Fender style clay dot.
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If you look at old ones you see a lot of colour variation, but its almost always the case that the darker the rosewood, the dirtier the dot. Whatever material was used, it needs to get discoloured by the natural oils in the rosewood.
Chips
The callahan clay dots did not discolour with rosewood oil. The chips behaved much more like i wanted. I used the composition ones as they were less granular than the Harvite.
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https://i.imgur.com/2Dirp9M.jpeg
My Trading Feedback can be found here: https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/62765/bad-alice/p1
match that with the right FIMO or a mix of the two. The one I am using at the moment is darker than it looks in the imgur pic I linked to above
i will do some mixes next week and see what I can come
up with