My first guitar paint job (PICS)

[Razor]

Very good job! That turned out great!

[Nuclear Vampire]

That looks really cool. Much better than the original bolted steel imo.

[LastInLine]

Came out great. You should be very happy with that result for your first attempt.

[StukaJU87]

I like it, dude. Very nice.

[z1n]

Yes very nice work man! I wish I had the skills to air brush. It looks very worn and not so perfect (like the Jackson finish). Great job!

[VEGETATHEPUPPET]

Great Work !

[m2pmd70]

Good job, it came out much less cartoony than the factory.

[Vlover]

No, I'm really bad about never remembering "before" pictures.

The process in general was....

1. Stripped it down to bare wood.

2. Painted on a white sandable auto primer. Allowed this to dry overnight.

3. Sprayed it with dull silver auto paint. Allowed to dry for about 7-8 hours.

4. Airbrushed on some sienna and light blue.

5. Allowed the sienna and light blue to sit and become tacky.

6. Rubbed the sienna and light blue out with a rag. This left most of the silver exposed but now with "tarnish" on top.

7. Used masking tape to brush-paint the seperator lines.

8. Took a socket with an extension and sat it down where the rivets would be. Airbrushed dark on one side and light on the other.

9. Took a small screwdriver and scratched the center of each rivet down to the white primer. That's the "glow" you see.

10. Brush-painted the red triangle to break it up a little.

11. Sprayed the entire thing with three coats of clear.

Is their a good book for a beginner to learn how to do this?

[PowerTube]

Is their a good book for a beginner to learn how to do this?

Probably, but what I went by was these links:

Part One

Part Two

I didn't follow this 100%. For example, this guy doesn't mention rubbing out the tarnish colors with a rag, but I got that idea from sponge-painting walls in my house. I also didn't put exact-sized circles over the rivets to do the tarnish spots. Instead, I held a socket down where I wanted each rivet and airbrushed the rust around it. You might notice that his final example is very "perfect," like the Jackson Bolted Steel job. I followed the overall guidelines, though.

[toejam]

Awesome! Great job.

[Jacksonfan]

Indeed! That rocks. Nice Job!

[delt]

> 7. Used masking tape to brush-paint the seperator lines.

I woulda done it the other way around: paint the line color first, then use pinstripe tape to mask where the lines would be and paint the metal color on top of that. Nevertheless, nice job especially considering a) it's your first attempt and b) you supposedly have "no painting skills"