Faded Headstock Restoration

[jester]

Hey guys and gals,

I did a little restoration on the faded headstock of a Corvette Proline neck from 1994. I thought about creating a thread about it, since you may find it interesting.

Unfortunately I do not have a before picture of the headstock, but it was turned to a brown tint because of fading. I started by sanding with 600, 800, 1000, 1200 to create as smooth a surface as possible. You should be ok with a last grit of 800 however. Two pictures of the headstock after sanding:

 

[jester]

Looks a bit scary eh? Let's see now.

The product I used is this:

It is an oil based stain, ebony black color. Before applying, we should mask the area around the headstock.

Note that it is a good idea for the neck to be finished in order to be able to remove any spillover without having it seep into the wood. In this case the neck is maple (with wenge laminates) so it is really important that it is well finished. In my case the neck is finished with a nice layer of Tru-Oil. Wenge or Ovangkol necks should be fine even without masking but it certainly would not hurt.

You may be able to skip masking (in fact if I did it again I would not mask), by using very thin coats of paint that can not spillover, and using reasonable care.

 

[jester]

So, let's apply the stain.

Use a small brush to apply a thin layer of the stain on the headstock. One or two dips of the brush in the paint will do. The reason you want to go thin is that you don't want dust particles to be trapped into the paint. If the layer is thin, you can easily remove them after the paint dries with some fine steel wool. Try to apply a very thin layer, very evenly. Do the center areas first then the edges, when your brush will be more dry, so that you do not spillover.

With the product I used, I didn't have to take any special care of the W inlay. It just would not stain it black but only very slightly darken it. I believe the paint needs to be absorbed to do its darkening work and it just can't do that on the inlay. If your product stains the inlay, you should be able to clean it with a cotton swab dipped in mineral spirits. You also use the cotton swab it clean any spillover you may notice, as in the following photo. I had lots of working time to remove it with the stain I used.

I am not sure what the dye's drying time is. I left the layer for about 6 hours to dry well.

 

[jester]

When the dye dries up, you will get a bit of an uneven look on the headstock. Certain areas will be shinier (more paint), others will be more dull.

What I did is use very fine steel wool (0000) to very lightly rub the headstock so that it all gets a dull look. In that stage it is not that exciting.

The final step that fixes things is this: Use a coffee filter (which is porous and without dust or lint that a cloth would have) and rub the headstock in a polishing manner. You will see that it gets shiny overall, and look even. The color will be pitch black of course, which is the aim of this restoration. The feel will be slightly grainy, but it is very even overall.

The finished headstock looks something like this:

In the last picture with direct light you can notice the slightly grainy feel and a couple of dust particles trapped in the paint. This happened because I used a thick layer of paint. I will probably sand and refinish at some point, now that I understand better how this works.

You probably want to do the application/steel wool/filter polish cycle 2-3 times, with 5-6 hours between application and steel wool. This will give you a nice solid finish.

That's it, I hope your found this interesting. I had fun doing it, and the before-after contrast is amazing, although the final result is not absolutely perfect due to inexperience. But believe me, you won't notice anything in real life even with small imperfections.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask!

 

[DemBoneZ]

Awesome mate thanks for the info!

 

[Rehan]

Awesome Yanni! Now if I could only trust myself to do it on my bass

 

[aguacollas]

Very nice, and I love the coffee filter tip. It looks great at the end.

 

[jester]

Very nice, and I love the coffee filter tip. It looks great at the end.

Thanks, when I have a little time I 'll follow up after doing it a little better, with no dust particles etc. Very thin coats is the key.