Guitar painting: part 7 (clear coats)
I put 10 thin clear coats on my guitar over the past couple of days. It's now totally shiny:
I think it's looking pretty good. I doubt anyone would mistake it for a factory finish -- there are lots of little screwups. But as a live guitar that will probably take some abuse, I think it looks just fine.
The final step before putting it all back together is to wet sand the clear coats to make the surface nice and smooth. Right now it has a bumpy orange peel texture to it as you can see in the pictures. The Paint Your Own Guitar book says that I need to let the guitar sit for one month before sanding (it would have been three months had I used any other colors.) I don't know if I have the patience to wait that long so I'm going to look around on the net later to see if anyone advises that I rush right ahead.