Tutorial: how to apply paint to a guitar?

Here is a complete tutorial that I wrote for those who want to paint and personalize their guitar with different types of special effect guitar paints.

This article on guitar tuning is aimed both at people who are beginners in the field of painting but also at craftsmen and seasoned painters working in the field of violin making.

I present the different steps and products that allow you to paint a guitar, with professional paints from the Stardust brand and in general with any professional quality paint.

Guitar Tuning: a summary of the steps for painting a guitar

Step 1 ► Prepare the base (surface sanding or stripping)
Step 2 ► Apply a primer (primer or paint)
Step 3 ► Apply the effect paint (I will show you different cases)
Step 4 ► Apply varnish

I invite you to find the details of all these steps further down in the article.

Whether you're painting a body, a bike, a drum set, or painting a guitar, the processes and rules of the art of painting are relatively identical, because in truth, what supports paint is indeed a primer, and not sheet metal, wood, whatever the material of the guitar or the object to be painted!

I believe that automotive type finishes (which are solvent type acrylics most of the time) are the only modern products that can provide the maximum level of strength and shine.

To summarize, a complex painting, or more precisely an effect painting, is done in 3 steps (base / paint / varnish) while a simple paint (a lacquer) can be done in 1 step.

Tools you need to paint a guitar:

♦ A paint gun (with the compressor that goes with it)
♦ 220 / 320 / 400 / 500 / 800 abrasive paper
♦ Sanding block
♦ Masking adhesives

The products needed to paint your guitar

♦ Primer in a spray or pot
♦ Wood impregnation varnish
♦ Effect paint and thinner (or ready-to-use paint)
♦ Polyurethane varnish
♦ Cleaning thinner for the gun

Methods of application

Here in this article I will not cover application methods other than spraying. I strongly invite you to abandon your brushes and rollers, and work remotely without touching the surface! This is the major difference when painting with a spray gun, an airbrush or even a spray paint: the paints are atomized and projected. On the contrary, with a brush or roller, we inevitably create marks and traces. Especially since for effect paints, the same ones used in vehicle personalization, the paints must be sprayed.

Step 1 ► Prepare the background

The preparatory phases are essential: start by determining what the steps and strategy will be to create the foundations of your painting job. To do this, I advise you to simply observe your guitar as it is and determine whether the wood is bare, varnished or painted. You will need to have your clearly established project in mind, with the paint you plan to apply, in order to choose the right background color to establish.

The head, body and neck of the guitar are generally made of wood (spruce, cedar, mahogany, rosewood, oak, maple). The type of wood doesn't really matter, because you'll prepare it as follows:

1 / In the case of raw wood

► If you want to keep transparency:

The wood of the guitar is bare, meaning there is no varnish, primer, hard base and the wood is truly raw. In this case, and in this case only, I advise you to apply a wood impregnation product. This can be a water-based epoxy resin for impregnating wood, or simply an acrylic varnish for wood.
This is an essential phase, in order to block and prepare this porous material that is wood.

Start by sanding with P400 abrasive paper, vacuum up the dust using a vacuum cleaner or blow off the dust and sanding residue using a blow gun and compressed air (for this, you must have an air compressor).

Next, apply 2 coats of varnish, waiting 30 minutes between each coat. If you see that the first coat has been completely absorbed, you can apply a second and even a third coat to create a solid impregnation layer and a perfectly smooth base.

If you plan to keep the natural look of the wood and apply a matte or glossy varnish, we advise you to skip all the next steps and find our tutorial on varnishing guitars, at the end of the page.

► If you plan to apply paint:
Then you probably won't need to keep the natural look of the wood visible in the background.

In this case, I advise you to use a surfacer filling primer. It is an opaque and thick product, in a solvent formula available in aerosol or in a pot to be applied with a paint gun.

This product will fill the ports of the wood but also all the micro-defects and it will create a thick layer intended to be sanded after drying. It is a product that dries quite quickly and is easy to sand.

Primer also has another advantage, as it is available in several base colors such as white, gray or black, which is particularly useful for establishing a specific color background for special effect painting ( metallic, chrome, chameleon, fluorescent...).

Sanding

Sanding is a very important step and it has 2 functions:

• by abrasion, it will create a smooth surface ready to paint
• through its action, it will create the perfect conditions for adhesion with the next layer and therefore guarantee good resistance over time

I advise you to sand with P400-500 abrasive paper. You can also use an electric or pneumatic sander, but always keep in mind that for a custom guitar painting project, you should not sand with a grit finer than P500 at this step.

♣ Important! When sanding flat, flat surfaces, I recommend using a sanding block to sand flat and perfect the surface. If you sand with your hand (soft and not flat!), you won't actually remove all the defects.

2 / In the case of a painted surface

In such a case, we do not need to apply a primer, or any other product. We can simply create the necessary conditions for good adhesion by lightly sanding and then starting to paint.

You can apply a primer if the surface of your guitar is damaged, that is to say it has scratches, holes, unevenness, etc. In this case, apply 2 or 3 coats of primer. our filling primer: this is the same product that is used on car bodies above the putty to smooth the surfaces before painting.

Step 2 ► Apply a primer (primer or paint)

In a guitar tuning project, establishing the background involves applying a uniform color to the entire body of the guitar. This is necessary when you have a special painting project.

Of course, this is not necessary when you are simply varnishing the wood, or when you plan to apply an opaque glossy lacquer.

Why apply a primer in a guitar painting system?

As this is a base color, we are not talking about blocking and fixing the raw wood surface, but more about preparing the specific color needed for painting. Indeed, when we use paints with special effects, they are rarely basic, opaque colors and more generally semi-transparent paints. This is why each type of effect paint needs a particular background color.

Here are some examples :

♣ Fluorescent paint ►White background
♣ Chameleon painting ► Black background
♣ Pearlescent paint ► Black background or white background depending on the shade
♣ Chrome paint ► Glossy black background
♣ Glitter paint ► Black background or color background

The use of primer allows you to establish a homogeneous white or black background color. However, for some special effect paints, I advise you to apply a deep black paint, that is to say a pure black. And for this, several choices are available to you, with small packaging:

• black base spray
  
• black solvent base for airbrush 125 ml
  

Application is done with a paint gun or aerosol. I do not recommend using an airbrush*.

Once your background is dry, do a surface sanding with 500 grit paper. You are now ready to paint the effect paint!

Step 3 ► Apply effect paint

Today there is a very wide range of paints called “special effects paints”. If you're interested in learning more, you can download the PDF catalog here to see just about everything out there today.

Applying special effect paint is usually done with a common pneumatic spray gun, with a nozzle size of approximately 1.4 mm. For most special effect paints it is possible to use finer nozzles such as 1.0mm for example.
We offer 0.8 – 1.0 mm mini guns that are very effective and suitable for painting a guitar.

♣ METAL FLAKES effect

To create glitter paint on a guitar, we use special glitter called Metal Flakes.

I advise you to use a black background to obtain an effect of depth. Or, on the contrary, I advise you to use a background of the same color as the glitter, to obtain a bright color effect.

In summary, there are 2 ways to apply the glitter to the guitar (on the METAL FLAKES glitter page you will find the complete and detailed instructions):

1/ with a 1.4mm paint gun, mix the glitter in binder and then spray repeated layers on the guitar until the background is completely covered.

2/ With an airbrush, it is possible to use the mini FlakeBuster to project and stick the flakes dry on the varnish

freshly applied.

On silver glitter, it is possible to apply Candy* varnish. It is a transparent and colored varnish, which will allow you to color the glitter and add an impressive depth effect.

♣ CHAMELEON EFFECT

Here is one of the most sensational and visually effective effects. It is a pearly color that produces a color change depending on the viewing angle. I recommend chameleon paints, because they are very beautiful paints and above all very easy to apply, which is not negligible when you are an amateur painter!

Background: the background must be black. It is possible to achieve interesting and different results with varying background colors.

Apply several thin layers of chameleon paint to your background, until it is completely covered. This paint is available both in aerosol and in a pot.

♣ CANDY, MARBLE, CRYSTALIZED EFFECT

The term “Candy” refers to these colorful, transparent lollipops, which give a deep, appetizing color. It is possible to recreate the same effect on a guitar. This consists of 2 steps:

1/ apply a metallic layer (for example aluminum paint)*
2/ apply several layers of Candy clearcoat (color of your choice)

I advise you to apply at least 3 or 4 coats, to get a really dark color, but you can apply more and apply up to 5 or 6 coats! * For the underlay, it is possible to use any glitter, sparkle, crystallized or marbled background. I am referring in particular to the Crystallizer and Marblizer* effects.

♣ FLUORESCENT or PHOSPHORESCENT EFFECT

There are fluorescent paints and also photo-luminescent paints. These can glow in the dark, but this is also the case with fluorescent paints which can become very luminous in the dark provided they are illuminated by an invisible or visible violet light source, so this can be very interesting if you do concerts.

Background: in the case of these special paints, it is imperative to apply a white background.

Apply these paints with at least 3 coats, leaving 5 minutes between each coat. I advise you to apply as many layers as possible, that is to say 4 to 5 layers, because the more layers you apply of these transparent colors, the more intense you will have an effect.

Once again, as with all body paints or special paints, a varnish must be applied directly afterwards.

Step 4 ► Apply varnish

The rule for covering paints
Whatever paint you use, it is important to cover it with varnish. This helps protect the paint but also makes it shine, and even intensify its effect. It is important to ensure the correct application of the varnish, in particular to ensure good adhesion between the paint layer and the varnish layer.

There are therefore 2 ways to apply varnish:

1/ apply the varnish very quickly after painting (generally before 30 minutes, because beyond this time, the paint becomes too dry on the surface and it closes: adhesion is no longer possible directly and it must be done sanding).

2/ let the paint dry completely, then sand superficially with P500 abrasive paper

You can definitely use either of these techniques. However, I advise you to avoid sanding special paints, such as fluorescent, phosphorescent, chameleon, pearlescent, etc. These are sensitive paints that don't like sanding very much! If you have to, then in all cases use an abrasive sponge rather than abrasive paper.

Apply varnish to the guitar

I have dedicated a complete tutorial article to varnishing guitars, and therefore strongly invite you to discover it!
You can apply a very beautiful varnish both with a spray gun and with aerosol varnish, provided you use the two-component aerosol bodywork varnish.
Apply 2 coats of varnish.
Between each layer, wait 10 minutes.

The goal is to obtain a perfectly shiny surface, with a well-stretched varnish. To do this, I advise you to place the guitar flat and apply the varnish in a shiny, “wet” layer. Promote a dry and temperate environment (avoid cold temperatures, as well as too hot temperatures, to avoid running problems in the first case and orange peel problems or lack of shine in the second case).

All ceramic type varnishes, ST6000, ST8500, UHS830, are suitable for creating ultra-shiny and hard finishes. However, they are only offered in 1 or 2L size kit
I therefore recommend the Mini bodywork varnish kit which is available in 850 ml all included.

♣ In the world of violin making, it is common to use single-component nitro-cellulose type varnishes. There is a belief established on more or less demonstrable knowledge, according to which this type of varnish would be optimal for promoting the sounds produced by the resonance box of classical guitars.

In my opinion, it is simply a question of thickness and it is better not to multiply the layers of varnish and paint on a classical guitar. Note, however, that one coat of paint is equivalent to a thickness of approximately 0.015 to 0.02 mm at most and that one coat of varnish is equivalent to 0.02 to 0.025 mm at most.

How much paint for a guitar?

It depends on the paints. However, I will simply say that the minimum packaging available for all products on the STARDUST site is more than sufficient. Concretely, it is approximately 125 to 250 ml, for all products.

Can you paint any STARDUST paint on a guitar?

Yes, absolutely, whether it's a chameleon, glitter, Candy, a rust, phosphorescent effect, or other, everything is perfectly possible. The rule is to prepare the support well, to be able to then paint any paint.

How to varnish a guitar?