When it comes to getting a smooth neck surface.

My only complaint (other than the whole 3M thing and teflon in the blood of every living creature on the planet) is that the "dust" of the Scotch Brite is chemically inert within the body. Breathe it in and the particulate stays in the lungs.

So wearing a mask when using it, and vacuuming the residue, is a solid prophylactic.

I used steel wool and took great care to keep the particulate away from pickups (masking tape on set necks, removing the necks with bolt ons).

Both work very well and afford the ability to work in stages until one has accomplished the desired result.
 
rolandson said:
My only complaint (other than the whole 3M thing and teflon in the blood of every living creature on the planet) is that the "dust" of the Scotch Brite is chemically inert within the body. Breathe it in and the particulate stays in the lungs.

So wearing a mask when using it, and vacuuming the residue, is a solid prophylactic.

I used steel wool and took great care to keep the particulate away from pickups (masking tape on set necks, removing the necks with bolt ons).

Both work very well and afford the ability to work in stages until one has accomplished the desired result.
Click to expand...
You're right, but I think 95% of the produced dust is not green and must come from the guitar finish.
 
BGood said:
You're right, but I think 95% of the produced dust is not green and must come from the guitar finish.
Click to expand...
I'm only referring to the green shit...the guitar finish will either kill you in 50 years, or get you really high. The green shit will make one horribly ill... probably wish for being dead but as @3bolt79 can attest... medical science can keep one, who's lungs are full of crud, alive for a very long time.
 
rolandson said:
I'm only referring to the green shit...the guitar finish will either kill you in 50 years, or get you really high. The green shit will make one horribly ill... probably wish for being dead but as @3bolt79 can attest... medical science can keep one, who's lungs are full of crud, alive for a very long time.
Click to expand...
When you think about all of the "crud" we've been ingesting since birth even without medical science the fact that we live as long as we do is kind of amazing. But I agree. No sense helping "The Reaper" at his work.
 
soulman said:
When you think about all of the "crud" we've been ingesting since birth even without medical science the fact that we live as long as we do is kind of amazing. But I agree. No sense helping "The Reaper" at his work.
Click to expand...
man, it ain't the being dead part that I'm concerned with... it's how I get that way. Spending a week, or a month drowning in my juice doesn't appeal to me...
 
soulman said:
When you think about all of the "crud" we've been ingesting since birth even without medical science the fact that we live as long as we do is kind of amazing. But I agree. No sense helping "The Reaper" at his work.
Click to expand...

Don't take it for granted. I almost died because I did at my job. I didn't know any better so I just did what I saw the painter do. He used a respirator when painting a car but if he was just doing a small part he didn't. So I copied him. Within 9 months, I had so much crap in my lungs that it caused over 2.5 liters of fluid to build up in the left side of my chest.

I had no idea. I would wake up in the morning and my ribs would hurt a little so I would joke with my ex about "she must have kicked me in the ribs while we were asleep". And I'd take a few pain pills and go to work. One night I woke up and I was having some sort of muscle spasm in my chest and I almost couldn't inhale. I almost couldn't breathe! And it hurt. B A D.

So I take a hydrocodone and go to the ER. They eventually send me home with ibuprofen and think I was drug seeking and I wasn't really sick. Why? I didn't put down on my paperwork that I was taking pain medication. 🙄 A week later, the other side of my ribs was sore so I went to the ER at the Level 1 trauma center here. A different hospital. They had a chest tube in my ribs 30 mins after I got there, draining out all that fluid that hospital 1 missed. I didn't go home for 2 weeks.

They scheduled me for emergency surgery the next morning. They did a Thoracotomy; A thoracotomy is a surgical procedure in which a cut is made between the ribs to see and reach the lungs or other organs in the chest or thorax. Typically, a thoracotomy is performed on the right or left side of the chest. Mine was on the left.

The cardio-thoracic surgeon said that I could have died at any time. There was so much fluid in my chest, it was crushing my heart to half it's normal size. That explains why my resting heart rate was always over 100 bpm no matter what. It had to beat twice as fast to keep pumping the volume of blood my body needs. I would lie in bed for hours trying to fall asleep. 4 hrs later and it's still 110 bpm so I'd take 2 or 3 pain pills because that's the only way I could relax enough to sleep.

So during surgery, they cracked my ribs open on the left side and went into my lung. The doctor said they cleaned a bunch of crap out of my lung. He said it was like picking Play-Doh out of carpet. That was all the paint and clearcoat I inhaled that collected & solidified in my lungs. And almost killed me.

While I was in ICU for 10 days, my ex left me. Told me I was just attention seeking and that's why I was at the hospital. When I got out, she refused to let me have my things and 90% of the stuff In our house was mine. My clothes. My furniture. Plates. Silverware. Other furniture. Even my wallet with my ID and money was there and she refused to let me have it so I couldn't even get my prescriptions filled at the pharmacy.

Thank God the babysitter was there when I got there. She let me in and I got my wallet and my clothes and my ex kept everything I owned. She was also pregnant with our daughter so I figured she needed it more than me anyway. I went to my parents house since I had nowhere else to go. And I let her keep everything because I didn't feel like fighting with her. I don't fight & argue. I just don't lol.

Anyway. I almost died because I didn't use a respirator half the time because I didn't know any better. That was around 2011. Almost 14 yrs later and I still have health issues from it. Still have fluid in my chest that they won't do anything about because "it's not bad enough to worry about yet". Or it wasn't last time I had it looked at.

Dont be a fool. Use the proper Personal Protective Equipment.
 
Last edited:
As far as smooth necks, mine are all great. The 2 I had that were matte are nice and shiny now. The rest have always been shiny and slick. I think the 59 Les Paul Epi I got recently took maybe a week to shine up from the matte finish it had.

I do have one that's different from the rest, on my Indio 'Retro DLX Plus' T-style. It has a super thin finish on the neck for some reason. So thin that I've had finish start flaking off after damaging the clearcoat. If you aren't careful, it will just keep flaking off.

So I covered those 2 areas with superglue to replace the missing finish and so it would stop flaking off. Leveled it and polished it up and I can barely feel them while playing. I've never seen a polyurethane or polyester finish this thin on a guitar before. I'm guessing it's normal for this guitar. I can't see this having been some sort of error.
 
I've never used a green 3M pad to sand down the gloss finish on a neck and have always used a mask when working around any airborne particulates including dusty dirty construction sites. But I don't doubt the smoking may have done more damage than any of that.
 
Back
Top