The white basecoat has dried and now it’s silver time! Instead of the charcoal metallic like last time, this time I’ll apply a coat of Createx Wicked Metallic Silver.

This coat came out a bit blotchy looking. Maybe when it dries it will look a bit better.

The next step is some candy orange!

I sprayed the body with a white basecoat. I used Createx Autoborne Sealer White for this. It covered everything up really nice!

The next step is to spray metallic silver.

I was not happy with the paint color, so I’m going to paint it again but use a lighter basecoat this time. Also, I’ll take the opportunity to fill in some dents and dings that showed up when I painted it.

The first step is to sand down the areas with dents and dings.

Then I added Bondo to the areas and let it harden overnight.

The next day, 20 minutes with a palm sander took care of 99% of the paint.

Sanding back the paint leaves some of the black sealer in the teeny dents and dings that I missed. I’m kinda glad they will be filled in now!

The rest of the paint was removed by hand with 320 and paper by hand.

The end result is better than what I started with!

I put the final color coat on the guitar today. The color coat is Createx Candy2o Grabber Orange 4654. This is a clear orange color that lets you see through to the metallic color underneath. The more you put on, the more orange it gets.

I’m very happy with the results! I’ve never sprayed a candy color like this on something that I care about.

Here is a video of it outside so you can see the color better.

After some thought, I don’t really like the color. It looks cool outside and in bright light. Inside and in lower light, it looks way too dark (like brown or copper). I’m going to repaint it using a much lighter metallic base coat.

Stay tuned..

I was too excited and decided to spray the next color. The next step is the metallic color. I used Createx Wicked Charcoal Metallic W359. This paint is also water based and easy to clean up.

It took a few passes to get the coverage right, but hole shit it looks cool!

Here is a quick video of what it looks like outside.

The next step is to spray even coats of candy orange until is looks sexy as shit. I’ll use Createx Candy20 Grabber Orange 4654 for that.

The black and metallic are the easy parts of the paint and I’m pretty nervous about the candy. I’ve only ever sprayed candy color on plastic models.

I sprayed the guitar with a black sealer coat. This is the first of four colors.

This paint is Createx Autoborne Sealer 6002 Black. It’s nice because you can get small amounts of this stuff and it’s water based so it cleans up nice and easy with warm water.

I’m spraying out of a Harbor Freight HVLP detail gun and using my awesome friends compressor and advice.

I was pretty nervous about this. I’ve never used a spray gun on anything I really cared about. Luckily the paint manufacturer has good instructions.

The next color I’ll spray is Createx Wicked Charcoal Metallic 359, followed by Createx Candy2o Grabber Orange 4654, and then lots of 2k clear.

Wish me luck!

I need to do some final stuff to get ready to paint the guitar. I needed to make some fixture to hold the guitar while I paint it and still allow me to paint all the sides. And I need to find a way to hold it without me actually holding it.

I used some scrap pine to make a fake neck that I can attach to the body. Then I used a piece of 3/4″ galvanized conduit (the stuff used to run wires in places the wire can’t be exposed). I flattened one end of the conduit in my vise and drilled some holes to mount it to my faux neck. The conduit was bolted to the pine neck thingy and voila!

To mount this to my workbench, I drilled a 3/4″ hole through a couple thicknesses of 2×6 that are glued and screwed together. This makes a solid 3″ long bearing surface to hold the overhang weight of the guitar body. This thing has to be strong enough to hold the guitar without me worrying (I’ll still worry). Luckily the conduit is slightly less than 3/4″ so it’s easy to turn and it does not have too much slop. I’ll use the tag team of my workbench vise and some screws to hold the fixture nice and solid.

I’ll do some final cleanup around the workshop and put drop cloths everywhere around the guitar.

For the neck, I’ll just hang it from the ceiling and paint the headstock.

After filling the old screw holes, I installed the new tuning machines to make sure they fit right. I also drilled pilot holes for the screws.

The tuning machines are Grover Rotomatic 18:1 tuners. They are the non locking type cause I have a locking nut for this guitar.

These pretty much fit the old Schaller ones from the 1980s. The only thing that didn’t line up was the screw holes. They are all 1/32″ or so off which is why I filled the old screw holes.

Time for some work on the neck and fretboard!

I gave the whole neck a good sanding to smooth things out and remove some age marks. I also sanded the headstock where it will be painted to rough up the paint (I’m not going to strip it). I filled the timing machine screw holes with toothpicks. I pulled out the old plastic fretboard dots and put in some cool red jasper stone dots. Then sanded the whole shebang and put a coat of oil on.

The new dots are a bit larger than the old ones (a good thing). Opened up the hole using increasingly larger drill bits. The drill is in reverse so it doesn’t dig in. Then I filled the holes with CA glue.

After some sanding, the dots are nice and smooth! After a coat of lemon oil, the fretboard and dots look awesome!

The Vanguard neck is now fretless. I think this will be the very first fretless flying V with a Floyd Rose!

Actually, it’s getting new stainless steel frets that will be smooth and sexy. It’s also getting new fretboard markers that are way less lamer.