Putting on the Lacquer.

Damn.

This whole project had been going so well. The lacquering turned out to be a bigger pain than I had even imagined. I started the process the same way that I had started all the other painting sub-steps. I set up the garage in a similar way as before, with the cardboard on ground and the guitar body hanging above. Then I sprayed it, like I had done dozens (?) of times before that and left it to try.

So, imagine my horror when I came back later to find that the first coat I put on was far too thick, and the lacquer had actually dripped a bit on various parts of the guitar. I tried to rub off the drips with my finger, and while that helped just a little, it actually ripped part of the base coat of paint off, revealing the white primer underneath, as well as a gaping gash across the guitar body. It's made even worse because this gash highlights how many layers of primer/paint that I put on there. I even tried to sand off the lumps with my extra-fine sand paper. No dice. Sanding actually just ended up sanding off the freshly sprayed coat of lacquer around the lump, but not the lump itself. I had to stop from fear that I would sand off the base coat before I sanded off the lacquer itself.

So what to do? I decided to fix up the areas where the primer was revealed by using a black marker to color it in as a quick fix. Looking back, I guess I could have just taken the old base coat and tried applying that with one of my paint brushes, but my panicked brain must not have been functioning properly, probably because the lacquer fumes had gotten to my head. For the gashes, themselves, I didn't know what to do, so I decided to trudge forward and keep on applying the lacquer, with thinner coats this time.

Funny enough, I actually spent the whole weekend doing this. I started Saturday morning and stopped applying the lacquer Sunday evening. And I guess I took the "thinner coats" mantra to heart, because at the end of all this, I don't feel like there's enough lacquer on the guitar. I can see parts of it that look pretty glossy, but they're not as glossy as other parts of the guitar. This likely happened because of one of two reasons: 1) The guitar was hanging, so part of it likely dripped down to the lower part of the guitar and 2) I didn't spray a very even coat. The trouble with point 2 is that it was difficult to tell where I had sprayed and where I had not. I started using a headlamp to help identify the 'wet' areas, but apparently that wasn't enough.

So, I don't think the lacquer coat step is finished yet. I'll try again next weekend, and maybe I'll think of something to do.

Thanks for reading.