Three coats of spray on polyurethane down. Looking good, ready for final finishing.

I got some more work on the RG450 done today. The weather held out, although my can of white paint didn’t.

As of last night I had applied two coats of clear satin polyurethane to the neck. It was looking and feeling pretty good, so I figured I would do just one more, and then finish off the neck.

While things were going great with the neck, finishing the body wasn’t. I had applied 8 coats of colour to the body, and thought I had enough to allow me to sand out most imperfections, which I would have been happy with. I started on the wet-sanding and discovered very early on that I hadn’t.
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Seven coats of paint on the body now, and a lot of sanding and polishing to get this looking any good.

I got a chance to continue on with the RG450 project today. During the week I managed to rough up the primer with some course grit wet and dry sand paper, and got a couple of coats of white paint onto the body.Today would be the day I would try to get as many coats of paint on the body as possible.

I’ve now sprayed seven coats of paint on the body, and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to sand out the imperfections without going through to the primer. There are many runs and pimples to sort out, but I’m hoping the one light coat of paint left in the spray can will be enough to cover any major issues if there are any.

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The body from the 2003 MIJ Ibanez RG470, modified with a Jem style monkey grip and output jack route.

A while back I had a Japanese made 2003 Ibanez RG450 with Edge Pro donated to me by a good friend of mine from Jemsite. It was in quite rough condition when he bought it as a project guitar. He cut a Jem style monkey grip, and rerouted the output jack to also be a Jem style one. It was just about ready paint when he passed it on to me. The Japanese Wizard II neck was re-profiled to a Wizard spec too.

So I finally got around to starting work on it this weekend. I had polished the previously ratty looking Edge Pro quite some time ago, but that was all until now.

I’m not expecting my paint work to be perfect, but it will be good enough for me to use as my test bed for pickups, and as a backup stage guitar. I’m also thinking about trying to build an in-guitar boost circuit for it.

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