Removing paint from an acrylic guitar's cavities



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Removing paint from an acrylic guitar's cavities

Postby Obulus » Tue Mar 31, 2020 12:07 pm

Hey guyses, long time no see!
I recently bought one of my dream guitars, being an acrylic Mockingbird. However, the previous owner painted the cavities with neon paint that I would reeeaaally like to get rid of. So my question is: how do I go about doing this? I don't want the acryl to get all scratchy, so I'm not sure if sand paper would be the right way to go? Also the little tube-y routings between the different cavities are all painted... Any advice on how to get the paint out of there too?

Here are some pictures:
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Re: Removing paint from an acrylic guitar's cavities

Postby coldbrightsunlight » Sat Apr 04, 2020 1:15 pm

I'm pretty sure you can buff & polish acrylic to remove scratches, so using sandpaper (carefully) is probably not a bad way to go. But I would like to make very clear I'm not an expert and I've not personally tried that. The small routing cavities.... Trickier! Not sure on those, I'd be worried about any solvent you might normally use to remove paint damaging the acrylic material - but again I'm not an expert and there may well be something that works.

I mostly wanted to say that is a seriously cool guitar. :rock:
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Re: Removing paint from an acrylic guitar's cavities

Postby Schlatte » Sun Apr 12, 2020 5:40 am

do you know what kind of paint it is?
Maybe some solvent solution that gets rid of the paint but leaves the acrylic untouched would be the best solution. Best case scenario would be if it was some water-based paint, then you could just wash it out...
Otherwise I would check the chemical resistance properties of acrylic glass and see if there is some solvent that you can use to clean off the paint.
Sandpaper would work to get off the paint, but I don't know if it will be possible to polish up the acrylic to full trasnparency again, especially in those narrow bits between the pickups...
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Re: Removing paint from an acrylic guitar's cavities

Postby JonnyAngle » Sun Apr 12, 2020 9:04 am

Anything with methylene chloride will melt the acrylic.
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Re: Removing paint from an acrylic guitar's cavities

Postby coldbrightsunlight » Tue Apr 14, 2020 5:44 am

Yeah. It's not impossible that there exists a solvent that will get rid of the paint but leave the acrylic intact... Unless it's acrylic paint. :idk:

Schlatte I've watched a few videos and stuff and it looks like with enough work and the right tools you can buff scratches out of acrylic to get a nice finish. But yes in the small cavities that'll be really tough...
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Re: Removing paint from an acrylic guitar's cavities

Postby Blackened Soul » Wed Apr 15, 2020 10:39 pm

Paint on superglue :thumb: it fills the sratches :thumb:
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