Fender Swinger Restoration Thread

[FenderBob]

Yes, Gather round...It's everyone's favorite guitar, The lovable Swinger.

Recently bought this refinned body.





My original plan was to restore the body and use a 24" scale neck. I Initially thought the red was original and it just had black overspray, but further investigation shows a white basecoat under the red (which Fender didn't use on Swingers) and only wood underneath that. Sad to say the Original paint is long long gone. Oh well, Time to take apart and get the Citristrip going.

The body has some original parts on it. The original pearloid pickguard is covered in many layers of thick paint and clear top coat. Don't know how I'll get down to the pearloid, the CitrStrip people said the remover would eat (melt) plastic. So I asked for some advice and tried a little pinesol w/o much luck. However, I am putting that aside for now, am concentrating on the body first. Stay tuned.

[frelonvert]

I am not sure that it will work in your case. But I have used nail polish remover (acetone free) with succes on some bad respay bodies.
It is very cheap, it is worth a try.

[mgeek]

Ooh! Cool project.

Don't use any kind of chemicals on the scratchplate, go old school- if it doesn't flake/peel off easily, then try a spot of wetsanding then buff it out

[Stratelejazzuar]

I think I've seen a few threads on here where people have slowly wet sanded through painted pickguards to get back to the original material. If it's really thick and flat enough you could always get thru the first couple layer of paint by razor blade scraping or something.

I can't wait to see more posts on this restoration!

[will]

Was any of the original finish hiding in the bottom of a rout? There things were finished is soooooo many different colors!

[FenderBob]

Was any of the original finish hiding in the bottom of a rout? There things were finished is soooooo many different colors!

Indeed there was! These were finished in Olympic White, Black, Dakota Red, Lake Placid Blue, LPB w/ Purpleburst, Candy Apple Red, and Sonic Blue.

And the original color appears to have been Lake Placid Blue!! (pics coming). So bummed the color was removed.

[mcjt]

Soapy water for flat-sanding the guard?
Go GENTLY.
Good luck!

[FenderBob]

Hint of Sweet LP Blue in the control cavity.

IMG_9742 by murl99, on Flickr


Hardware off. You can see the spot under the bridge that I sanded / spot checked for original paint. no dice.

IMG_9741 by murl99, on Flickr

Stripping Time!

IMG_9746 by murl99, on Flickr


Stuff eats styrofoam like nothing.... but I was surprised to see very little progress on the finish after a half hour. Almost like I never put it on, guess I need to leave it longer.

[mcjt]

i was pretty disappointed by citri-strip.

[PJazzmaster]

subscribed

[FenderBob]

i was pretty disappointed by citri-strip.

Me too. 12 hours later and there's still nothing I can scrape off. I ended up wiping the stuff off this morning.

[mcjt]

i bought it because people on OSG spoke well of it.
I was dismayed by the "apply and scrape off 24 hours later" instructions.
It was mostly ineffective.
i went back to my favourite nasty furniture stripper that says, "Wait 30 minutes then remove excess":

[terminalvertigo]

use the latter in a well ventilated area

[FenderBob]

Am probably going to send this to Dave's Guitar Shop in LaCrosse, WI for a nitro LPB refin.

Got 3 small kids in the house and would prefer to avoid the noxious fumes.

[Jaguar018]

I used heavy duty paint stripper and a heat gun and got like 95% there, but it's all about 100%-- so yeah... send it along and have a pro do it.