horrible. Although I don’t know for sure
that they’re toxic, it’s safest to assume that
they are.
My earlier experiments with scraping
the finish revealed that beneath the
toffee-coloured gloss exterior there’s a
lighter coloured base coat that Epiphone
most likely applied as a sealer for the very
open-grained Korina. Now, as I begin with
the heat gun, I discover that the gloss coat
separates to leave the base coat intact.
I have to decide whether to try and
remove this base coat so I can get down to
the wood, or attempt to preserve it. The
base coat is far more heat resistant than
the top coat and I realise that if I can keep
it intact, I won’t have to bother with grain
filler and all the other preparation work
usually involved in spraying nitro over
open-pore wood.
There are two potential complications.
Firstly, removing the gloss coat leaves the
base coat slightly pitted. Secondly, I need
to establish that the base coat will be
compatible with nitrocellulose lacquer.
I decide to sand one small area smooth and
spray it with Manchester Guitar Tech’s
sanding sealer (manchesterguitartech.co.uk).
The idea is to spray it on thickly to ensure
that it will adhere to the base coat and then,
after it has dried, level it to determine if it
can fill the countless tiny marks in the base
coat. It passes both tests, so now I know
that I need to keep the heat gun on its
lowest setting and concentrate on removing
only the gloss coats.BEST-LAID PLANS
It all sounds simple, and for the most part
it is, but one moment of inattention when
I’m stripping the bass side of the body
causes the finish and the base coat to blister
and start popping off in red-hot shards.
And of course, a small section of the
wood gets scorched.
Incidents like this can be regarded as
disasters or learning opportunities and
I’m going with the latter. Figuring out
how to rectify your screw-ups is a big part
of lutherie and I now have to decide on astrategy. The area of damage is about 15cm
long and there’s no way I’m going to be
able to blend it into the adjacent areas.
Instead, I decide to strip the entire side
back to bare wood.
It’s not as easy as it sounds, because I
am unable to remove the remaining base
coat using the heat gun without the risk of
damaging an even wider area. I try sanding
and make little progress – even with 80-grit
paper. Eventually, I resort to using my rasp
and even this formidable tool struggles.
The teeth quickly clog up with dust and I
have to use a file brush to clear it every few
minutes. But eventually, I get through the
base coat and once I’ve followed up with a
sanding block, I have a flat and clean wood
surface. Now I have to try and even up the
colour and mixing StewMac stains – vintage
amber with a drop of medium brown in
isopropyl alcohol – gets me pretty close.
Shellac is used as a sealer before I apply
grain-filler tinted with red stain to try to
match the rest of the body. The grain lines
end up a little dark, but the backgroundDO IT YOURSELFGUITAR MAGAZINE 133