Worn Again: Making a Relic Surf Green 50's Strat
Intro: Worn Again: Making a Relic Surf Green 50's Strat
Worn/aged 50's maple fretboard
Jumbo frets
50's style tuners and headstock logo
Aged white pickguard
Aged knobs and pickups
Tex Mex high-output pickups
Luckily, these features are available on the 50's Fender Stratocaster Road Worn series but this model is only available in 2 colors: tobacco sunburst and black. I decided I was going to make my own "budget" Road Worn 50's Surf Green Strat. As my base model I purchased a new, black 50'sFender Strat Road Worn series. I would need to repaint the body and duplicate the road worn look; Worn again - Surf Green style.
STEP 1: Disassembly
STEP 2: Stripping
STEP 3: Sanding Sealer/Primer
Don't try what I did - using an electric sander. It ate through the 1st coat easily. I had to do that section over. After 4 coats - with wet sanding with 220 grit between coats, I finally finished it off with 320 grit. The sanding is time consuming but worth the effort. You'll notice brush marks that I eventually got sanded out with more coats and sanding. Let the sandpaper do the work and don't dig into it. Also I didn't spend much attention to detail in the areas where the pickguard will cover. In fact, after the 1st coat, I masked off this area so it didn't build up with sealer/primer drips.
When finished I had no wood grain, very little evidence of prior road worn damage, and it was smooth.
STEP 4: Surf Green Applied
It dried fast, so after a few hours of the first coat, I started to wet color sand the body with 600 grit. This showed promise as it knocked off most of the dusting and I was left with an orange peel look at worst. A 2nd coat filled in these inmperfections with more dust. Color wet sand again.. A 3rd coat, color wet sand with 800 this time. Now it looks nearly factory before a clear coat. Not perfect but heck, it's gonna be a road worn guitar, so I'm not being too anal.
Just to get an idea of how cool this is gonna look, I test fitted the pickguard and neck after sanding the 2nd coat. Looks like the intro guitar, huh? It's almost gonna be a shame to apply the wearing to my hard work.
STEP 5: Clear Coat
Design Master, Triple Thick clear gloss
Krylon Super gloss
Krylon clear coat
The results were as expected. The triple thick had the most gloss and none of these acrylic products caused any harm to the paint. I decided to start with the least gloss and work my way up if need be. The original guitar didn't have a thick layer of gloss. When done I have to rough it up anyways to give it the swirled aged look of gloss that has seen it's years.
I started with 2 coats of the Krylon Clear and then wet sanding with 800 grit. It looked close to the original Road Worn gloss finish but applied a top coat of the Krylon super gloss to build it up for some good sanding and steel wool swirlies. I decided not to use any of the triple thick product. This is where I started to get creative. I wanted to add a little aging or slight yellowing to the clear swirled finished. I added some acrylic yellow ochre to my wet sanding water. It had no effect. No harm, no foul. After the wet sanding with 800 grit, I swirled the body with steel wool. This made it look dull and used - just like the guitar finish before I started.
STEP 6: Worn Again
I went to a guitar relic site that had instructions on how to relic a guitar. The rule to remember: don't over-do it.
Using my original pics as a guide and penciled around the approximate areas. I rubbed laquer thinner on areas to be worn using a rag and sometime paper towels. This rubbing required more effort and precision than I had expected. My primer coat was so thick it added to the work to break through to the wood. Also since the thinner begins to soften any finish it touches, I had to be careful to not wipe too wide. I was getting disappointed with my results because it was starting to show too much primer showing and not enough wood. To get more precise, I used an old flat head screw driver to lightly remove soft paint rather than the rag and rub method. I also cut the tip off an old small modelers paintbrush to apply thinner in small doses to edges, then back to using the screwdriver scratch away method. When I was satisfied with a worn area, I then used my 320 grit paper to smooth, followed by 600 grit. The final touch was steelwool, which added an additional coloring benefit. The steel wool on the bare wood areas would lift the wood dust and embed it into the white primer areas, giving it a more aged look. Cool.
For the nicks, dings, belt and rivet markings, and accidental drops, I used the same screwdriver and my driveway for a couple whoops moments. These were time worked with only the steelwool method and coloration from the bare wood areas.
After some convincing wearing with steel wool all over I was pleased and fitted the hardware again for dress rehearsal pics. My work is done. I will let the body dry good for at least a week in the garage heat, then I'll take it to my guitar guy for assembly and setup. I think the project was a success and I came in easily under $1000, which is far less than any Surf Green 50's Fender Strat I could buy today.
In hindsight, there are easier alternatives that are inexpensive too. You can purchase Surf Green bodies on eBay all day long for under $150. This would drastically cut down in time but you'd never get the experience of learning how to refin. I now feel confident I can tackle most solid color refin jobs on my own if given the time and materials.
Added note: To add some shine back to the dulled finish, I applied some rubbing compound today. It added the perfect touch of shine and gloss back to the body while keeping the thin swirled, used look. Now I'm completely satisfied with the look of the body. Nice thing about the rubbing compound is that I can continue applying it after the guitar is reassembled and it will only add to the beauty of the finish.
10 Comments
v-tron 8 years ago
MightyHammerhead 8 years ago
Great job!
Thanks for all of the detail, and all of the ideas and thoughts along the way. The up side to having not bought an Ebay surf green body is that now, you can relic any instrument. It will cost less to buy a better strat fully loaded, then it will to buy the parts separately, not to mention they're already assembled.. ;+)
SamS21 8 years ago
could you maybe tell me more about the products you used to paint the strat and what they basically are please? (I live in Belgium so I don't think we'll have the exacte same brands)
Such a beautiful start! Congrats!
Any idea how much you eventually spend on the job? (without the price of the 50's strat)
Thanks for letting us enjoy this beauty,
Sam
JohnnyD77 11 years ago
bobbyderf123 11 years ago
idkline 11 years ago
freeza36 12 years ago
WickeD12 12 years ago
mrlunna13 12 years ago
But in the end, what a great job.
Thanks for sharing,
Jesse M.
friger 12 years ago