A Black G&L and a Brown G&L Walk into a Bar

[Danley]

I don't know what the punchline is, but two black G&Ls walk out. First: Deep before pics from the eBay auction my dad bid on three years ago:




After pics - Changes include NOS saddles, rubber tips on the switches, and a full Nitro/ReRanch refin:






Oh, I said two walked out didn't I:



Still sounds great; but I'm not handling it much for a few months - even though the finish seems really hard. No clue if I'm going to remove the black paint from the knobs, but I feel like leaving it for now.

[Tooslowhand]

Congratulations. You did a really nice job refinishing the F-100. Excellent work.

[WitSok]

Wow, your F-100 turned out fantastic! Nice job Danley.

[FZTNT]

Great job for a refin. Wish I had the patience to tackle such a project, but I would first need a guitar that needs a Refin. I do have the G200 but that would be sacrilegious to mess wit that finish even though it's a bit scared up. It's the only guitar I have that I can toss around and put tools on it while working on it. Hell, I'm still afraid to have it re-fretted. One day I'll find someone I trust to do it.

But again, fantastic job and do take it easy on it for a while to let the paint settle. How many coats of clear did you end up putting on it? and what kind of buffer/grit did you use for the final polishing?

Tom

[Danley]

Thanks - Wow, I would be nervous to even touch a G200 let alone fling one around But it's great to have a player grade axe, and I can see myself babying this one too much now, hah. In a couple years I will prob. either need a refret or fret leveling too, the previous owner really liked the D/A barre chord positions and there's some wear on the cowboy chords. Already looked up the particulars on that process; I guess it's unusual to do because the frets weren't installed top-down by G&L.

I used five cans of clear, but I wouldn't have needed to- when I was two cans in I sanded back the clear by a decent amt. to get rid of unreasonable orangepeel and emptied a further three cans on it using the 3x3 process. So maybe there's 3.5 - 4 cans that wound up not getting sanded off. I used an orbital car buffer with sheepskin disc and the 3M polish sold by ReRanch. I thought I was going to need to use a terrycloth and microfiber discs on the orbital as well- but in all honesty it already looked *really* good once I gave it a first polish by hand, so I just used the sheepskin to finalize things. Wet sanded the final coats with 800 , 1000 , 1200 , 1500 , highest 2k.

[Kit]

Great job with the refin.

[FZTNT]

Thanks for the info. I have a couple guitars with very light swirling and pick scratches which I think can be buffed out. I just don't want to get too carried away with heavy handed buffing. I have a bunch of air tools including some orbital palm sanders I might try. Just have to figure out how to get a soft pad onto it. They are mostly made for sand paper I think. I need to pick a test guitar to start with, maybe the Nighthawk or red Invader. Eventually working up to some of the more rare ones as I get my confidence. Or, maybe I'll just leave them alone. I just love a perfect shine on a guitar if I can get it.

Oh, the G-200 was a pawn shop find and not beaten up but has enough finish wear and scratches that anything I could do to it would not be noticed. I wouldn't refinish it though for obvious reasons.

Tom

[john o]

Amazing, nice work on the F-100, Danley!

[glvourot]

Looks really good. Great job and great patience !

[y2kc]

I shuddered when you said you were going to cover that sweet mahogany but the end results are stunning! Great work.

y2kc