Respraying the guitar sides - binding Q

[donnyb]

Hi,
Seeking advice on respraying the sides of an acoustic guitar.

I am spraying over the original stained lacquer surfaces with a slightly darker stained clear. Its a facelift, not a strip or sand back to bare wood.

Have sanded all surfaces to help key adhesion of the new lacquer over the old. The back of the guitar is finished i.e. body, neck and headstock rear surfaces. I'm leaving the top surfaces until last.

For the sides, I've masked off the top of the body, up to the furthest horizontal edges of the black binding.

Question I need advice on is : On the sides, should I mask off the vertical edges of the top and bottom perimeter binding , or leave the binding unmasked and scrape back the lacquer afterwards? I assume you have to do something as the lacquer probably won't last over black plastic binding.

I am only applying 3 double coats of stained lacquer.

Thankyou .

[Fathand]

If you mask and spray lacquer you will have a ledge the height of your 6 coats of lacquer. You could try to level that but risk sanding through your new finish.

I always put finish on my binding the same as the rest of the guitar. So far none has come off, including my first banjo, built in 1981. I have used nitro, tru oil, shellac and EM6000 on wood, celluloid and abs binding.

Since your binding is black, your coloured lacquer shouldn't matter. Tortoise is good for that too.

If your binding was white or a light colour, I would spray one colour coat, scrape then use clear for remaining. Scraping colour off binding is easier than it sounds with a finely adjustable box cutter set to the width of your binding.

[conecaster]

Are you Installing new bindings?

If so you can scrape them recessed the plastic for filling with lacquer.

You should get some cellusol and add it to the lacquer

This well dissolve into the old lacquer and blend the new and old together.

Cellusol will retard the curing.

If you coat over the whole side the cellusol is the best way to get a blended film.

[donnyb]

Thankyou for the replies.
Im not doing new bindings, just cosmetic overcoats of stained acrylic lacquer to a beginner's guitar I found in very poor condition in an 'op shop' for $10.00. Although I gave then $20. A "Sergovia". It looked 20 years old at least, or left outside in the weather for a week !

Did a neck reset, re-seated and ca glued and levelled, crowned ,all frets, re-routed and repositioned the saddle slot (intonation was terrible) and made it easy beginner playing with the string clearances at the 12th fret (capo on 1st) 1/16" 1st string, 5/64" on the 6th . Tone is, well, not memorable, but not bad.

I took your advice Fathand and just sprayed over the bindings. I finished the last of the surfaces this afternoon, with the original amber top rubbed back a bit and overcoated with 3 doublecoats of a slightly more red amber stained clear.

The previous owner (obviously a child) , had carved their first name into the upper bout with a scriber or something. So had my first ever go at doing a burst around the whole top using the same stain mix I used for the brown sides and back, with a few drops of black added for better cover of the "etchings". By the time I had finished the burst, I'd got the hang of it, lol !

So I've got a bit of wet sanding with 1000grit around the burst's inside perimeter to get it looking more as it should, once it's had 48hours to gas off some.