DIY Bass Guitar Paint Job

This is the bass guitar that I recently refinished.  It had quite a few marks in it, so I wanted to refinish it.  I am lucky in that my dad teaches at a high school with a state of the art spray booth.  This made painting it quite easy.

First, I had to prep the guitar.  This involved wet sanding it with 400 grit sand paper, then filling any cracks or holes with body filler. While body filler is designed for metal, it works amazingly well on wood too.  After I had filled the holes, I had to sand it all once more, then coat it with some primer. Once the primer was dry, I had to sand it again.

After all of the prep work was complete, it was time to pick colors.  I decided that I wanted to do a 2 stage orange paint.  This meant that I had to choose two colors. For my base color, I chose a solid orange.  For the second color, I chose a very metallic and transparent yellowy orange color.  I misted this color around the edges and let it bleed into the center of the guitar.  This gave it a really cool two tone/metallic effect. Once the paint had dried, I had to give it a few coats of clear coat.  This makes it shiny and makes the colors "pop".

The final step was to reassemble the guitar. The final effect was amazing, and I am very happy with the results.