[Sc0rch]

Bought an Ibanez S320 for $150 at a pawn shop with the purpose of rebuilding it, whoever owned it didn't take care of it, poorly painting it with some crappy gray metallic and the electronics were all messed up so I took it home. I'm a sailor by trade and wanted a nautical theme done, using various shades of mahogany brown stains, a fine tipped sharpie for graphics and tinted wipe on poly for island areas/hardware pieces. During reassembly I shielded all cavities with copper foil and installed Dimarzio PAF Joe and Mo'Joe pickups.

the victim S320 before I started disassembly and sanding down...

the canvass after sanding old finish off...

Drew the vision I had on paper first to use as my guide...

what's going on here...

made the back look like wooden deck boards.

few coats of wipe on poly to pop the look of the grain.

Started drawing...

after hours of drawing, and darkening in island areas with tinted poly, I got to this point

added some Testors metallic gold to the nautical line.

Fully Assembled.

Hope you enjoyed the progress pics.

 

[ibaraki_gaijin]

That's inventive and really well done.
Such an improvement.

Am i weird that it's the back that I really like?

 

[FireEagle]

Amazing job!! That's is beautiful! A very unique and original theme.

 

[LonePhantom]

Great work, it looks brilliant. How did you keep the black marker work from not washing out when you did the poly clear?

 

[Sc0rch]

oddly enough, it was a simple Extra fine tipped Sharpie that worked. I did however let the artwork sit for 24 hours before putting the coats of wipe on poly. I tried a couple different brands of indian ink markers from Micheals and they all smeared. The Sharpie worked perfectly.

 

[Hoseki]

That's just fantastic and now you've got me wanting to get my S-320 back so that I can do this, both front and back.

Am i weird that it's the back that I really like?

Not at all, it's a really great look.

 

[jim777]

That is amazing looking, sweet job!