Incase you missed it – part 1
My original plan for refinishing the Marauder was to bring it back to something similar to it’s original color – A deep wine colored stain. But as I looked over images of Marauders with different finishes, most of them being stained rather then painted, something just didn’t seem right about them. The classic woodworker finishes just felt too stodgy for the design, which too me feels very 60’s retro and aggressive. I realized my instincts in college may have been spot on. The retro-ey teal seemed a much better fit, not to mention the grain on this guitar was certainly not of the quality that begged to be shown off.
So when I stumbled upon a freshly refinished Strat on one of the guitar forums, I knew I had found my color. A pale creamy, vintage white with a black pickguard. Surprisingly I found a place that sold new Marauder pickguards in just about any color you’d want. I could have also made my own using the original white one as a template, but WD Music had them already finished for only $36. So I went ahead and ordered one to get things going.
For the paint, my plan was to use some reranch nitrocellulose lacquer. I found that site while looking for tips on properly refinishing a guitar and boy did I hit the mother-load. The reranch site hosts a forum for guitar refinishing and building, that is one of the best places on the net to learn about this stuff. Many of the regulars there have finished dozens of guitars. Some have hand built there own guitars from scratch. I’m constantly amazed at the stuff people are making there and it’s one of my favorite guitar sites. Not to mention the people there are extremely helpful and most importantly, really love guitars.
So after doing some research there, I ordered a can each of sanding sealer, primer, Olympic White, tinted clear and 2 cans of regular clear. My plan was to get the cream color with a light coat of the tinted clear over the white.
One other finishing product I bought was some black oil dye. It’s intended use is for dying leather, but I had seen people use it on rosewood fretboards to make them look like ebony. I thought that blacking the fretboard like this, and then painting the face of the headstock the same cream as the body would give the whole guitar a cool two-tone look. I bought this dye at Stewart-MacDonald, more commonly referred to as “stewmac”. This is the other site that, if your gonna get into finishing, fixing, or building guitars – you need to know about. They are basically the Home Depot of guitars. They carry all the weird specialized tools and supplies luthiers and weekend refinishers need to do just about anything from fixing a scratched guitar, to building one from scratch.
So the plan was in place, and the UPS trucks were rolling. In the next part I’ll get this project started.
