Refinishing my peavey rotor

[Monkeyboy]

I've got a black peavey rotor, and I've started sanding it down, because I hate black guitars. Underneath, the wood looks pretty nice; when I wet it, it goes a lovely orange colour similar to the natural finish one in the picture. I just wanted to know, what's would be the best way, and products to use, the best finish? I'm going to get some poly paint for a sunburst on the edges, following this (http://www.projectguitar.com/tut/burst.htm) tutorial, but I'm not sure about what I need to do to the middle to get it looking good. Should I dye it? Or would some clear finish bring the colour and grain out enough? Do I need to wet it, and sand it, to get the grain coming up? I don't have an airbrush, so I need something that comes in a can. Any help would be appreciated :)



http://www.peavey.com/assets%5Cimages%5Cfullsize/00579130_2.jpg

[martinedwards]

DRY sand it.

paint it with clear paint from the same family as you are going to do the sunburst with.

Don't try to mix clear acrylic with black car paint etc.

I'd also do a few coats of clear over the whole thing to finish.

so.....

sand off all the paint

3 or 4 clear coats.

leave for 48 hrs

fine wet & dry (wet) to smooth out any little bumps or orange peel effect

dry & buff with a clean cloth

sunburst

3 coats of clear

fine wet & dry

dry & buff with a clean cloth

polish

sell for millions on ebay!!

[Monkeyboy]

sell for millions on ebay!!

Hehe! that made me laugh:D Thanks for the help.

What paints would you recommend I use? Are the plastikote paints any good? They're acrylic lacquer I think. I need something that's safe to use without a respirator or a spraying room or anything. I wanted to do the edges in something wacky like metallic or fluorescent if possible.

[martinedwards]

I used Acrylic Lacquer on the Les Paul I built. worked fine

[Monkeyboy]

Cheers for the help martin. Will acrylic laquer take a good polish? I've alreadys started doing it.... I've just got the final coats of clear, and then the polishing to do. I don't really want the "so polished it looks like a mirror" effect that a lot of PRS's have.... I just want to polish it to the point of being smooth and even. I guess closer to shinyness of fenders, than PRS's.

I've found this tutorial (http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.php?showtopic=1723) which looks pretty decent.... I'll have to buy the polishing compounds and some 2000 grit wet and dry.

Just one thing..... I don't have an electric drill with a buffing pad. Is it possible to do just by hand?(with lots of elbow grease, obviously). I've got a dremel multi-tool with a buffing pad on it, but it'd probably take about a year to do the entire guitar with it ;)

If you've got any tips that aren't covered by the tutorial, I'm all ears!:)