Ten Year Les Paul Custom Restoration Project

Here is the story:
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In 1996 I found a well-beaten and trashed Les Paul Custom in a pawn shop. The guitar was in pretty bad contdition, however, the neck was straight and there were no cracks or breaks or repairs to the headstock and neck.

The prior owner, probably some teenager, used a power sander to remove the finish and then brushed on some type of clear coat. In the process of removing the finish, the guitar changed shape a little and the binding was rounded off. It looked like some of the hardware was not removed and it was ground down also. Most of the hardware was trashed, broken, missing or non-original.

There was an area on the back of the headstock that contained the serial number. This traced the guitar back to 1976. The potentiometers in the control cavity also suggested 1976.

I did not know if this had originally come with gold or chrome hardware. Most Customs had gold hardware, but some of the "Norlin Era" Les Paul Customs came with chrome hardware. The only way I could tell was after I removed the studs for the bridge. The sander had sanded the finish off the top part of them, but the part that was burried in the wood was clearly chrome plated.

The small area on the back of the headstock demonstrated the original color. A dark mahogany.
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So, back in 1996 there were a few articles in guitar magazines about having Gibson restore older guitars (kind of like the Classiche Ferrari program). So, I contacted Gibson and they said they did not really do the work at thier shop, they have the guitar redone by an authorized shop. So I contacted the nearest authorized shop and dropped the guitar off.

Other issues with the guitar were a trashed fingerboard, missing or partially missing Mother of Pearl inlays, poor frets and binding coming off the fingerboard. We agreed on a price and I anxiously awaited the guitar's return.

Estimated turn around was around 3 to 6 months. After 3 months I can remember hurrying home from work to see if the guitar had been delivered to my doorstep. Again, this was in 1996.

 

Well, I waited and waited and waited... and finally the guitar arrived!!! Just two days ago! That's right, over 10 years later.

It turns out that there were some issues with the finish not turning out as expected and it was returned to me without being re-finished. However, the fingerboard was fixed and it was re-fretted (at no cost, due to the lengthy stay at the shop).

A lot of things have changed since 1996, and now I have a house, workshop, spray equipment and 28 other guitars. So, here we go to try and get a finish on this guitar.

The problem with the finish was 'fisheyes' and he had put some shellac on the guitar to provide a base to try to eliminate them. Well, this shellac was put on 10 years ago and it has already checked and yellowed. Rather than re-strip the guitar again, I used a nitrocellulose sanding sealer to fill in the checked areas.

Since the wood is sealed already, I am going to have to add the dye to the clear nitrocellulose lacquer and spray it on that way to get a translucent finish. I found an 'off the shelf' dye that looked like a perfect match. Here I am testing it out on the back of the headstock.
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Looked like it would be a good match, but getting it even as I build the color up might be problematic.

I also wanted to deal with the serial number area a little better, so I carefully sanded it to a rectangle. I also carefully sanded multiple coates of clear and amber lacquer from over the serial number. A somewhat risky thing to do, but I went slow and stopped before cleaning off the numbers (though they are digitally 'wiped off' in the pictures).
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Here are the Nitrocellulose finishing supplies. The "Brushing Lacquer" will be thinned, tinted and sprayed.
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Here are a bunch of parts on the workbench. I don't know if this guitar had a cream or black trim. The pickup selector ring was cream so I think it originally was dark mahogany with chrome hardware and cream trim rings.
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Here are a couple of Les Paul customs from the 70s that have the chrome hardware.
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I polished some of the shellac finish on the guitar and thought about letting it be blonde (like this picture I found on the web), however I really hate the look of bare wood on a guitar.
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But it is a little hard to read. Probably does not make any differnce, but since this guitar came from a pawn shop I was worried it was stolen and someone would recognize it. Actually, now that it is painted, and on its way to restoration, if someone tries to claim it they will have to pay me for the restoration and I don't have a problem with that.

 

The finish on the top is done! It does not look that glossy because this is like a 2 stage automotive finish and clear nitrocellulose will go over this. The binding will just be scraped with a razor blade or microscope slide (supposedly the way Gibson does it at the factory) to remove the paint prior to clear coating.

Again, the way this was done is that the aniline dye was added to the thinned nitrocellulose and put in the gun. I started out real thin (just 3 drops in the cup) and added more as I put the coats on. My last cup had about 20 drops. Even though the wood was not stained, this is a translucent finish and you can still see the wood grain. It is maybe not the prettiest color, but it is the original color for this guitar. It will really look nice with the blonde pickup rings and pickguard. I have some double blonde Dimarzio pickups that are going to go in it.


So, this authorized Gibson repair shop can't get a finish on this guitar in 10 years, but in 3 days I have the top painted. Guitar repair skills come in many forms and someone who could perhaps take the top and neck off of a F5 mandolin may not be the greatest at finishing solid body guitars. Although I am using a 'vintage' finish here, solid body guitars, in general, have been finished somewhat similar the automobiles of their time.

In fact, if this translucent finish did not come out I was going to go with an opaque finish as my backup plan. I have some red Chroma One left over from my GT4 project and this would have looked awesome on this guitar.
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I spite of the super glossy finishes seen on guitars presented on the various guitar restoration web sites, the original Gibsons were not flogged with clearcoat. Maybe not so important with a solid body, but if you believe the wood contributes to the sound of the guitar then you don't want to paralyze it with a super solid finsh.

I looked at the Gibsons that I purchased new, and none of them that 'mirror like' finish. They ARE very glossy, but ther is still some grain texture that shows through. They have not been built up with a bizillion coats of clear.

Likewise I am not planning on 30 coats of clear. I associate those super mirror finishes with thick polyurethane finishes. The supposed advantage of the nitrocellulose finish is that it can go on thinner and not clog up your sound.

 

Oh, yea...you should see the vintage metal clarinet that I just finished...this thing was almosts black when I started. No pads or corks and the body was also bent...it was a real basket case.
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Sounds like this will be fun and easy. Just scrape away the paint off the plastic binding to leave a nice line between the paint and the binding. Well, not so easy. When done with the paint still soft, the finish seemed to lift . When done with the finish dry, the paint just chipped away, like peanut brittle.

What I wound up doing was to use a razor blade to 'chop' at the edge of the finish. This kept it from chipping. It was very tedious (3 hours) getting it right. The Les Paul custom has 3 black lines on the binding and on a dark top guitar it would seem like the thing to do would be to stop at the last black line. This way the actual black plastic line on the binding forms the transtition from the white to the finish. Well, not so on an original Les Paul. The last line to show is the WHITE line. So I had to chop the finsh back to 0.5mm past the black line to the final white line. Any irregularity in this step is clearly visible. And if too much is removed there is no going back because this is a tint that can't be brushed on.

Anyway I was glad to get a clear coat on top of the finish to protect it after all that work on getting a good edge on the binding.
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