Vintage Tele restoration - and a vote on colour

bgmartinsbridge

Yes it did!! - that wood grain and undercoat needs to stay :-) 

WezV

bgmartinsbridge said:

Yes it did!! - that wood grain and undercoat needs to stay :-) 

shush. 

 I definitely didn't say  there might be a chance i could keep the existing sealer coat to help blend old wear and new finish.

That would be a silly thing to  say before i knew if it was possible


good job I was right!



more vintage white hiding under the neck plate


found the dowels




So i have just done  the bulk of the removal on the back.   Next step will be to give it a good air dust to remove all the pink dust, then stabilise the old sealer coat with some thinned nitro and capillary action.



i had a little go at the neck pocket too, and found a couple of stamps and the router marks look right

WezV

fwiw, i wouldn't normally attempt this with the sealer, but it became obvious the extensive wear was partly down to some de-lamination between red and sealer

WezV

i thought that would get more of a reaction! 

Now tidied up a bit


I have fully stripped the front and sides because they did not have much sealer coat showing anyway

routes are now full depth and tidied up a bit

Rocker

ATB_Guitars said:

richardhomer said:

Were most Custom Colours in the Fender catalogue until ‘69? Custom Colours were always rarer on Teles than Strats - but that one looks particular good to my eyes....

I have an original 1973 Fender catalogue which states Custom Colours (Lake Placid Blue, Sonic Blue, Olympic White, Black, Candy Apple Red and Natural) were available for an extra $17 above the base price of $302.50 for a Telecaster.

Seems amazing you could have had an original sonic blue Tele back then for an extra $17...!

$17, back then, was a fair bit of money on top of the price of the guitar. 

GoldenEraGuitars

Came up well @WezV . How far on are you with the blonde mix?

WezV

I have started mixing a slightly off white for the base coat... matched pretty closely to the bits of original paint I have found hidden away.

EricTheWeary

Rocker said:

ATB_Guitars said:

richardhomer said:

Were most Custom Colours in the Fender catalogue until ‘69? Custom Colours were always rarer on Teles than Strats - but that one looks particular good to my eyes....

I have an original 1973 Fender catalogue which states Custom Colours (Lake Placid Blue, Sonic Blue, Olympic White, Black, Candy Apple Red and Natural) were available for an extra $17 above the base price of $302.50 for a Telecaster.

Seems amazing you could have had an original sonic blue Tele back then for an extra $17...!

$17, back then, was a fair bit of money on top of the price of the guitar. 

Equivalent of $98.61 now apparently. 

Roland

WezV said:

i thought that would get more of a reaction! 

I guess people are awed by your attention to detail. Most of us would automatically sand back to the wood and put on a new base coat.

WezV

i did a mockup on this one to check the colour and tints. no more pics until the end, but happy to share this one with you to show the way its going

BluesyDave

Great work as always.  Looking forward to seeing this finished.

WezV

well, we are  finally in the last stages, just a couple more jobs to do.

I thought it might be nice to see some progress pics on the finish.   Relicing,  to me,  breaks down into a few stages.  tint, wear and dirt.  in reality, each of those sages breaks down into a few more

At some, it looks  pretty shoddy, but its a series of steps towards something I am happy with.


After masking off the wear, the first stage was a slightly tinted off white.  This was colour matched to the bits found in the ferrules and other holes hiding under the red.   I don;t actually have a pic of it at that stage.

The intention for this was always heavy tints and discolouration  - something to match that original wear i Have worked hard to keep, and looks right against that neck


The first step towards that is a tobacco tint - which looks like this


now that is far too even to make a convincing aged finish.  If you look at some heavily aged old teles the colour varies a hell of a lot more.  So teh next step was to break up the evenness a bit and add some amber tint too.

Which gets us closer tot he colour I am after


After that, it gets its clear coats and the tape gets pulled off.  The edges  of the masked wear get some addtional work to help them look more random.  which gets us to the last pic we saw



All the tints are done, but it lacks appropriate wear (specifically some checking) and is missing dirt.

So the next stage was some time in the freezer.   Checking started to develop nicely, but i wanted a bit more.   This one is a mix of freezer checking and the upside down air duster trick.  I did a dark stain in the cracks after the freezer, but not after the can, this gives a nice mix of dirt levels in the cracks and avoids the human urge to make things look consistent.

Which gets us to today - 

SteveRobinson

Fantastic work.

gavin_axecaster

I dig it.

Philly_Q

Crikey!

rexter

NIce job, looks pretty on the money!

WezV

thanks guys.   

It's not all about making it look old, the guitar needs to work well too.

This one had a dodgy A-string tuner. On inspection the gears are all okay, but the old grease had combined with years of gunk and set pretty solid.   All the tuners were in a similar state, the A-just had a bigger bit  of grit working its way round the gears

So a quick job this morning was to dismantle all the tuners, give them a good clean inside,  and reassemble.

stickyfiddle

@WezV you're getting really good at this...

Philly_Q

Do those F tuners have metal buttons, or chromed plastic?  I'm never quite sure.

WezV

Philly_Q said:

Do those F tuners have metal buttons, or chromed plastic?  I'm never quite sure.

I assumed metal, but they are noticeably light now you mention it.