Official Luthiers Forum!

I'm doing some work on an early L-00 that needs a firestripe guard and I'm wondering if anyone here has a source for good firestripe material. I am aware of the Greven material and the firstripepickguards.com site, but both of these being resin guards I would suspect their thickness to be much greater than I am aiming for. I would prefer celluloid material. Ideas?

Steve Kovacik

Steve: Have you tried Mario Proulx? Not sure he does the firestripe but his pickguards are quite thin.
Tom

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

Have you looked at Terrapin Guitars? I don't have any first hand acquaintance with their products, but they list a firestripe celluloid material on their website. I can't find a picture of it. They seem to sell a mix of stuff--mostly imitations. Elsewhere, I've read that Italy is the place to go for real celluloid.

At this point, I've lost my fascination with vintage plastic. If it saves a turtle, I'm all for it, but given all the cracked tops on Martins, and corroded metal parts on electrics, I think celluloid on guitars is a bad idea.

.....But keep me in the loop if you find the real thing.

Found this in the SM archives. Most likely not what you were hoping for but maybe it can help.http://www.stewmac.com/tsarchive/ts0088.html

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

Steve,
AFAIK, there is no new firestripe celluloid available. It is possible to hand paint this pattern, using clear 0.020" rigid vinyl which is painted with tinted lacquer on the back side. The finished thickness is about 0.024".




I just read through Dan's writeup, and I am surprised that it is so different from what I did:
1) I never used mylar (too thin, and the lacquer would not lay on it right).
2) I never painted on the front side.
3) I always used tinted lacquer, not alcohol stain. In my experience, stain never gave enough color density, and the edges were too sharp.
My method was to sand the rigid vinyl with 220 grit to prepare it for the lacquer. The next step was to paint the dark spots with a brush. Then I would spray clear lacquer on it to 'fuzz' the edges of the spots. This was the critical step, because spraying too much or too fast would cause the color to run. After that was allowed to dry thoroughly, I would spray yellow tinted lacquer to give some tint to the clear areas. Finally, I would seal with clear lacquer.
I stopped painting pickguards because I became very allergic to lacquer fumes, and the process would tie up my shop area.

In my experience, if you don't attach a celluloid pickguard by the solvent method, the shrinkage will be minimal. All my under-finish celluloid guards have been glued on with epoxy, and none have had a shrinkage problem. The first time I used this method was in 1981.
If you install the guard over the finish with pressure sensitive adhesive, it will not crack the top, even if it does shrink. This is the method that has been used successfully by Taylor, Collings, Santa Cruz, etc.

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John