So I've got this guitar. It's my Gibson SG Gothic. I love it. A lot. But the black. Ugh. It's just black and it used to be matte but I've played it so much it's shiny in spots and just kind of hideous. I need to fix it up a bit anyways, and I may be replacing one of the pickups for no good reason, so I was thinking about refinishing it. Anyone into woodworking? I've gotta get an apparently very thick layer of black paint off of it, then depending on how good the grain looks (i've heard the gothic series was made up of somewhat-cosmetically flawed guitar bodies painted black) I'm thinking about doing some kind of natural finish. My questions are:

How best to get the paint off? I've heard of using a heat gun to strip the paint, but I'm worried about that doing bad things to the glue in the frets. Sanding would probably work, but it could mess up the lines of the guitar. And I know nothing of chemical paint thinners, except that I'm probably really sensitive to them and would choke to death on the fumes before I got anywhere near stripping any paint off.

After that, what would make a nice, natural finish, provided the woodgrain is decent. I prefer dull finishes to shiny ones, so I was thinking about just doing a few coats of boiled linseed oil and leaving it at that. Otherwise, some really funky bright stain might be fun. I'd love a bright purple yet still woodgrain guitar, that would look awesome.

Provided the woodgrain is crap, what then? How should I go about painting it?

Also, while I'm asking questions, how about filling in scratches and dents? It's gotten quite a few gouges here and there, after 9 years of use. None of them have broken through the paint, but they're definitely dents in the wood itself. Is there an easy way to fix those? If I go the "natural finish" route, they'd look pretty cool, right? A bit darker?


Anyways, for reference, here are some pictures:
[link] Essentially what the guitar looked like when new.
[link] AMERICA, FUCK YEAH! You can FAINTLY make out some woodgrain on mine like that, when the light strikes it just right.

There she is today. You can kind of see what I mean about her seeing better days. I plan on keeping the hardware black no matter what, I really like it like that. Chrome is a bit meh, and unless I go for some kind of dark purple finish, gold is a no-no too.


I should probably post this in the forums too, huh? Yeah, gonna do that too. But you journal-readers get first priority. Also, a question for John, specifically. How'd you do those bitchin pickguards in your gallery? That would be a pretty cool additional project while I'm fixin' her up.