So! The first step was stripping the paint off the body of the guitar. Here's how it was:
It's a little scuffed from an attempt at sanding before. A poor decision. Because of the three ways there seem to be to strip paint off a guitar (Sanding, Heatgunning, and using a paint remover), heatgunning seemed to be the most appealing.
I mean, c'mon, it's like shooting fire from a gun.
Actually, it was recommended to me by a luthier who had refinished a bass he'd sold me.
So here's the gun we used:
It was like 20 bucks and it totally did the job, no problems whatsoever.
Now in this picture, you'll see a few labels.
They're there to mark where to connect the electronics once we put them back in.
So, we got to heatgunning!
And it took a bit to get going. We had a hard time telling when we actually got down to the wood, and it took a little time to learn about how long one should hold a heat gun in one area. (We're not actually using that stain, by the way.) Also, please use gas masks. We both had massive headaches/throataches after doing this work. A standard medical mask won't work, and fans, while they help, aren't as a good as a quality mask with filters.
But we got better! I'd recommend starting on the back first so if you happen to make a burn with the heatgun, it won't be quite as noticeable. The best method seemed to be roughly a 10 second hold on a small area, with the tip of the gun about an inch away from the wood, and then have a friend immediately scrape that area. It worked well for us, anyway.
We weren't too worried about little burn marks though, because rather than paint that guitar, we're planning on using red oak stain to make it look more olden-y, so the burns will give it some character for our project.
But either way, you'll probably be able to sand them out a little.
So as you can see, the front ended up looking better than the back, which is fine.
And the horns were really a pain. Our scraper couldn't really handle the angle, so you'll notice the little nicks. But we hit it with sandpaper later.
So after that, we hit it with rough, medium, and fine grit sandpaper. We still have a bit more to do, but it smoothed out some of the more obvious deviations.
Ok, so here's another cool idea we had. Now, admittedly, we didn't do this ourselves. Huey has connections to a few machinists, and they were able to take our idea and make it reality.
Yeah, that's right. SKELETON KEY TUNERS.
Looking at other steampunked guitars online, we were surprised no one else had thought of this. But it is a little complicated, and some people might not have access to a machinist. This video explains a little.
Like I said, we'll probably take them off and sand the neck a little, but it'll look roughly like that.
Ok, so next, we cut holes for the different electronics and switches we plan to add.
The project: Make a Steampunk Guitar.
This was a used Squier Stratocaster that I had bought off Craigslist for about $120 bucks. The guy had dropped a Seymour Duncan Invader Humbucker in the bridge, so I figured it was worth it. While I had it, I had a Seymour Duncan JB Jr. Humbucker put in the neck, and I very sloppily tried to put a Lace Tres Hombres Single Coil in the middle. I also had the stock tuners swapped for Grovers.
I don't have pics of mine, but in case you don't know, this is essentially what it looked like:
Also, keep in mind. Huey and I had already taken all electronics out of the guitar, and had deconstructed it to its various parts. So there's no pictures of that process. Sorry.
We're amateurs, and we're kind of doing this through internet research, and trial and error. But we had talked about doing something hands-on like this for awhile, so we just jumped in.
Plus, there seems to be a lack of really basic instructions for woodworking and the like, so we hope this can help some folks! If you have any questions at ALL, ask us!
