Re: Finished Warmoth Build
Here is a run down on the finish.
The neck was finished with Birchwood-Casey's Tru-Oil. The headstock face was painted black with a spray can of Duplicolor.
The body was painted with Rustoleum. If I had to do it over again I would definitely hunt down the Duplicolor paint codes for the color I wanted and order the spray cans. My local auto store only had the basic colors, and I had already bought the Rustoleum so I just used it. I initially tried black Rustoleum and some Minwax spray poly on the headstock. I ran into a few problems. I sanded it down and re-did it with the Duplicolor and SprayMax. Much better and easier results.
The real secret to the finish was the clear coats with SprayMax 2k. This is a 2 part poly finish in a spray can. You "activate" the can to mix the two parts, and it chemically hardens. Once activated the shelf life of the can is very short, but there is plenty of time to do a guitar body. It's a little pricey but it is worth it.
Here's how I did the body:
- Prep and primer (I could have filled the pores better, you can still see some of them in the right light)
- Sprayed on a few coats of the green
- Let dry and lightly sand
- Tape off the entire body (I used the standard blue tape, better tape would probably leave the lines a little cleaner)
- Printed out my "stenciling" on the computer onto standard printer paper
- Positioned and taped the paper into place with regular scotch tape
- Carefully cut out the design with a brand new Xacto blade (be sure to add more tape as you cut since the more paper you remove the weaker your paper becomes
- After you have cut out the design remove the paper and then carefully remove the blue tape which the Xacto knife should have cut through
- What you should have now is a guitar covered in blue tape except for the areas you want painted white
- Spray a light coat of green paint over the sections you just removed. What this does is insure that any "paint creep" under the tape is the same color as the rest of your guitar and wont show up
- Let that coat dry
- Spray on some coats of the white
- Let it dry
- Carefully remove all the blue tape
- Lightly sand the "stenciled" area to remove the ridges
- Lightly sand the entire guitar
- Spray on the clear coats
- Let dry
- Level sand (wet sand)
- Wet sand in progressively finer grits (I went up to 1500)
- Rub it with some polishing compound and finish it off with some swirl remover
I tried several different "sanding blocks" for leveling out the finish. The best thing that I found was a flat pink eraser (like you used to use in grade school) with the sandpaper stapled tightly to it.
I screwed a "fake neck" (flat piece of wood) into the neck pocket to hang it up for painting. If I remember right #12 screws barely bit into the pre-drilled neck holes in the body. Just enough to hold in snug but not enough to chew up the holes.
Again, thanks for the compliments!!!
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If you do want to do pinup girl thingy on it heres a link where you can just get a decals 
