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paint on top of original finish removal


mojobass
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just acquired a nice washburn status, and its had a re-paint at somepoint in black - not the best job but not horific. Anyhow, on the lower part of the body theres some natural wear on the black and beneath there's a faint sign of green!! I know these basses were available in a green clear finish, so i'm wondering if when it was painted whoever did it simply sprayed on top of the original finish!? Is that possible?? if so hows the best wat to try and remove the black without damaging what finish may lie beneath?? Ive been following the other thread on here about the washburn status refinish and i would like to have a go at mine, but if its still got he original green finish underneath i'd love to keep that!

any suggestions/help greatly received!

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Just be very careful and sand the black layer off!
Once you've done that, just finish the green coat with t-cut and polish. You won't be able to take the black coat off with anything less than 300 grit I think, otherwise you'll never get the scratches out of the green finish.
I would normally say nitromors, but that might just destroy both coats!

Truckstop

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I hope you manage to sand off all the black topcoat without damaging too much of the original green, but you may experience difficulties in the tight curves and angled corners. If you can though, I would then suggest getting yourself a flexible rubber sanding block and "flatting" the original lacquer with soap and water & 1000 grade wet & dry paper until it all looks "grey". This will give you a couple of benefits. It will help to get the lacquer nice and "flat" and remove any scratches. Then get yourself some polishing compound from Halfords and polish away the "grey", preferably with a slow running electric polishing mop and a little water. This should give you a finish like glass. But........be prepared to devote a lot of time to it!

Edited by Rowley Birkin QC
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thanks for the tips guys, i did a little more sanding and pleasantly surprised to see what 'lies beneath'!! the oroginal lacquer hasn't survived so the bit ive done is 'flat' but i like the matt finish on basses anyhow (well mostly) ive given it a little rub over with some warwick was and its come up nice enough! just need to spend quite a bit more time on the rest of the body now!! although it has to be said i'm not looking forwad to doing the front!! I may find a 'reason' why it was re-painted!!

[attachment=105449:IMGP0021.JPG]

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I imagine what he has done is used an ultra high adhesion primer on top of the green and then sprayed black, which is not the done thing on instruments because it's not durable enough for high traffic painting.

You might get away with wet/ dry sanding the black off but I really doubt you're going to get it flat and you'll be forever polishing it with 2000 grit W/D paper and or tcut.
You'll probably be better off stripping it and refinishing the lot, wouldn't use nitromors because of the new regs it's rubbish on anything like this. You could try peelaway or failing that a heat gun, then that kind of finish isn't too difficult to achieve with the the correct prep and quality paints.

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