Refinishing an Epiphone firebird

[Blazer]

A few weeks ago I got this call from a luthier who I befreinded if I could help him out with his newest project. One of his customers came in with an Epiphone Firebird which he wanted to have a copy made which used top notch materials and proper Firebird contstruction and details. He knew of my Thunderbird bass built and asked if he could borrow my routing template for that.

But to keep costs low the customer specified that that luthier would use all the hardware of the bird. Last week I walked into the workshop and Nick (the luthier) told me that the customer said that he should pick his epiphone clean and then toss the remains in the dumpster, knowing that I'm always at the lookout for cool project guitars he contacted me about buying the carcass off of him, we agreed on a price of 25 bucks. The guitar's body is made from plywood but it DOES have a set neck and it oozes Mojo. So I'm pretty excited about it.



I then fitted a custom pickguard (I love that old Diamond saw of mine) and two zebra humbuckers.

I liked the resulting look but I wanted it to be more like a vintage looker, something like this.


So today I stripped the guitar, gave it a very light sanding and applied the color.




It still needs a couple of layers of blue and a couple of layers of clear coat but due to a mishap with the masking tape I had to remove the tape, while it was off I put the parts on it to make a picture of how it will look when finished.

[drbassman]

Nice color. I like it! Looking forward to the finished guitar. what kind of paint is it?

[Nocturnal]

Cool color choice Blazer!! That will look nice when you're finished.

[exiledarchangel]

Nice color! I didn't knew that Epi Firebirds were made of plywood, are you sure of that?

[Blazer]

Nice color! I didn't knew that Epi Firebirds were made of plywood, are you sure of that?

In the nineties Epiphone used Plywood on a lot of their guitars, the current Epiphone Birds however are either made from alder or Mahogany