I’ have a few kits to paint using Oxford‘s NC Lacquers
I referenced the “Spin and Twist” painting rig in another post, but they can be expensive.. and remember, this is a hobby, not a profession so cutting costs is paramount. So I made my own rig, I call the “Sit and Spin” guitar painting rig.
It’s a bike maintenance rack and various pieces of PVC pipe and a chunck of wood. Most of this I found in my garage. I already had the bike rack and a few of the other parts and I needed something to hold the guitars as I painted them. The PVC connector pieces are the weakest link at this point. I will need to work on those and try to make them better.
As with the OG Spin-n-Twist, it works really well for guitars with bolt on necks, or you can paint the guitar before setting the neck, I guess.. For set neck guitars, what I saw was to use the acoustic mount and screw it to a routed pickup pocket. I was able to add a right angled steel tie from Home Depot and it works just fine. In fact the picture above is of an SG connected to the rig in this manner. For bolt-on neck guitars, like the Telecaster, it mounts a little more friendly.
And, like the OG, you can spin the body to get to the different sides.
One limitation is the have to tighten the height adjustment to put the guitar at the right height, but then once it’s locked in you cannot rotate the guitar. It “sits’ in one place. You can still “spin” it using the PVC handle, but you cannot “twist”. So, it can “sit” and “spin”, hence the ad-hoc naming “Sit-n-Spin”. A real reason not to rotate around is, if you notice the bike rack’s support legs, they don’t go to the back of the rig. I think it was meant to set against a wall, maybe? If you did allow the guitar to twist around the support, when it got around to the back of the rig, where there are no support legs, it will want to fall over. BE CAREFUL!
The PVC handle connects to the guitar using a piece of 2×2. I drilled a hole down the center to accept the PVC. I then drilled holes and used bolts with wing nuts to hold everything together. I learned from this experience and will be re-building these with things I’ve learned, like more of the PVC need to be captured by the 2×2.. the drilled hole need to be a little smaller to hold the PVC tighter.
I’ve seen a few examples of other ways to hold a set neck guitar for painting. One way I think I can adapt to the Sit-n-Spin is to get a piece of 1/2″ PVC that bends 90º and use it prior to the wooden block. I’d like to make it all hold together with bolts and wing nuts, that way I can use it or not depending of the type of guitar.