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So, I decided to refinish my '97 Wine Red Gibson "The Paul II" Why all this work you might ask? Well I love the body of "The Paul" which is 1/3 the width of normal Les Pauls, however, I hate all of the colors they came in, Wine Red and Ebony. So instead of buying a big bulky Les Paul Gold top, I am refinishing this to Gold top. This is all done predominantly with the work of my Dad, which I really appreciate. Having much experience painting cars, as well as being a perfectionist making sure i don't rush into things without sanding ect being perfect.

Day 1






Paint Stripping begins (VERY SCARY! for me)


Day 2 (sanding)





Day 4(slight color variations since some are from last night with flash and some from this morning)







First coat of primer(Out of 4)



First Coat of Gold (pics don't do it justice even though it is only the first layer)






Day 7 Final pics before polishing



Day 10 Polished Pics











Day 3
I will be doing the grain filler and the wood stain for the natural finish of he back.

Day 4
Almost a wasted day. I did the grain filler. Searched all over for oil based but after going to 5 stores had t o settle for water based. The water based is alot "wetter" as you would expect so you just essentially paint it on and let it soak in. However when sanding it off, the filler would gum up the paper and left tons of scratches all over. So I had to almost completely re-sand. I later realized the back was the exact color I wanted, and decided not to use a wood stain at all, hence ridding the need to have used the grain filler. Iproceeded to re-seal sand and repeat making a strong base coat to work with.

Day 5
Today is a pretty big day, sanded more on the face and sealed it with 2 more coats. After it dries I will proceed to do 2 coats of primer then starting with the gold.

This'll be interesting. Was there much left after removing the paint stripper or does it really melt it all away? Does it get rid of the sealer too? I was too sketched out by stripper so I used the heat gun + scraper method but there was a ton of sealer left over and it was a bitch to sand away.

The aircraft remover allowed me to get almost all of the sealer off. I didn't take pictures of the in between stage because I was too into working to go grab the cam. However there was quite a bit of red left over. What I did was take lacquer thinner on a tooth brush and rubbed the red out, and followed by running a lacquer dampened rag over it. I let it dry and repeated the process twice more to get as much as I could. I then gave it a quick rub down with white gas to neutralize the lacquer before sanding.

oooooooo,....consider this a subscribe. I love me some goldtop.

You could feasibly block fill the pup cavities and reroute for P-90's

Was there a headstock repair?

Psyre wrote:

I love gold top LPs, but I'd leave that natural. That looks great the way it is.
But then I always had a thing for Paul Kossoff's stripped Les Paul.


Marc Bolan's too.

It is a pretty nice looking piece of Mahogany (assuming). But if he block fills the pickup cavities and re-routes for P-90's he'll have to paint it to cover up the fillings.

Awesome, can't wait to see this one finished!

I love goldtops, prefer the "dark back" version, but they're the shit either way.

Looks like a good job so far. Goldtops kick ass, as long as they have P90s in.

monkeydancer wrote:Looks like a good job so far. Goldtops kick ass, as long as they have P90s in.

looking great. ive always wanted to strip the paint off the neck of my les paul, but knowing me, id screw it up something awful. humbuckers all the way

delaydecay wrote:looking great. ive always wanted to strip the paint off the neck of my les paul, but knowing me, id screw it up something awful. humbuckers all the way

As long as the OP ditches those ugly open coil pups and black rings,...it will be secks.

I do love me the tone of a hot output overwound single coil (says the bassist).

Bangin'!

Nice. I've played those "The Paul" Gibsons before, and they're awesome.

So far it looks great!

Thanks guys! I was pretty nervous to start, since the only painting experience I have is cars. Never done real wood work before. I'm actually not going P90's 8 ( It was something I thought about for a couple months. I'm gonna get some nickel covers for a bit and then switch to a pair of creme dimazzio's I'm really digging.

Psyre wrote:Thanks guys! I was pretty nervous to start, since the only painting experience I have is cars. Never done real wood work before. I'm actually not going P90's 8 ( It was something I thought about for a couple months. I'm gonna get some nickel covers for a bit and then switch to a pair of creme dimazzio's I'm really digging.

Just dump those black pup rings in favor of some cream colored ones. The existing black rings look like they've seen better days.

There are tons of resources out there for finish and while I'm not an expert (not sure the differences between cars and guitars when it comes to finishing), It's not as simple as sand, spray, wet sand, spray, wet sand,....etc etc. Mahogany is an open pored wood, so you'll wanna research "filling and sanding sealer". I assuming you are going with nitro.

If you can; check out Guitarmaking Tradition and Technology by Cumpiano and Natelson. See if you can pick up a copy at your library. Even though it's primarily for SS Acoustics it's an excellent reference and has a good finishing section in it.