I just refinished my alder bodied MIM (Made In Mexico) Fender Strat body in a thin polyester sunburst finish. My main reason for refinishing was the body was not as resonant as I would have liked. Tonally it was a bit sterile and very bright - not really desirable characteristics for a maple fingerboard guitar. It had been originally finished in the factory with an ugly metallic green poly finish, but then refinished with a horrendously thick off-white. Total finish thickness was just under 1,8mm in places! It looks like the second finish was also a factory job (perhaps the metallic green wasn't selling - I wonder why?).

Part 1: Choosing a Guitar to Customise | Part 2: Modifications To hardware & Setup | Part 3: Pickups, Wiring & Control Hotrods | Part 4: Other Wiring Modifications | Part 5: Refinishing

The Guitar before refinishing

It was my shortest time ever for a complete refinish: 6 days total - not bad for stripping, sanding and refinishing with an airbrush, especially when you consider I have taken six months for some of my best work. It's far from being my best looking job, but my primary concern was tone, rather than looks and the seven piece alder body did not make for a really attractive wood grain finish anyway, so I wasn't too worried.

Stripping down was a two day job, anyone who has stripped a thick poly finish will know what fun this was. Chemical strippers don't work (as poly finishes are inert), so you are limited to sanding or chipping it off, which are tricky as you run the risk of damaging the wood underneath if you are not very careful. Sanding creates a lot of dust, which gets everywhere and is not too pleasant smelling either.

Interestingly (at least for me), once I had the original finish off I found a thin maple veneer on both the front and back of the body. I've seen this done on other brands before, mostly to provide either a seemingly nice-looking piece of wood for a sunburst, or a closed grain to facilitate a thin finish. Neither reason applies in this case as the first finish was a opaque colour and thick enough to smooth down easily. Also, alder is already a closed grain wood. I can only guess that they do this with all the MIM bodies as a matter of course and then select the better looking ones for the sunburst finishes and use the others for solids.

I removed the veneer as well, as it was quite thin and I wasn't sure it would stand up to the sanding needed to prepare the wood. I also sculpted the body contours a bit - I play with the strap very short and the guitar is quite high so I prefer deeper contours than stock.

Not surprisingly, the body was a LOT lighter once the finish was off. Tap testing the body at this point showed the body was a lot more resonant than with the finish (somehow not too surprising). I then took the better part of a day in sanding smooth - from 150 grit paper down to 400, as I am a firm believer in the principle that wood which is properly prepared takes less finishing. I finished off the preparation by wiping off the last of the dust with a damp sponge, which serves the double purpose of getting rid of the last dust and raising the grain. Then I left the body overnight to dry thoroughly.

The first stage of refinishing was filling all the screw holes, as while I was going to use most of them again (apart from the six for the trem cavity cover, which I usually leave off), it prevents water from getting into the body later, during wet sanding - which often causes the finish to lift around the screw holes.

Next step was sealing the wood, for which I use shellac (a 1lb cut, for the technically oriented). Shellac is my material of choice as it dries quickly, does not react with the subsequent layers of lacquer (or decals, if I'm using them). It doesn't apply to this guitar, but with a clear finish, it helps bring out the natural beauty of the wood better than any other type of finish. A quick sand with 400 grit paper leveled the wood "fuzz" raised by the wetting the day before and the first sealing coat. One more thin coat of shellac and a light sanding finished my sealing coats.

For all subsequent coats I used an acid catalyzed polyester finish. Usually I will use nitrocellulose for the colour coats for it's looks and poly for the clear coats as it is hard and very durable. However, looks weren't my primary concern and I wanted to work quickly. Poly dries faster, so you can add more coats in a shorter period of time (the brand I use is ready to start shooting the next coat after only 10 minutes after finishing the one before), and it's hard enough to sand or polish relatively soon after shooting (ovenight in my case..

I used a reddish brown stain, mixed in the finish to do the colour coats - basically something which filled the requirement of me already having it handy. I used a small amount of stain for the entire first coat to give it the base colour, but darker than I usually would, to hide the grain better. With the subsequent coat, I started in the middle and gradually added in more and more stain until it was nearly opaque by the time I got to the edges. Then I used a solid black for the edges and the trem cavity, left it for a few hours and shot the first few clear coats.