Help cracking the paint plz

I'm on my vintage partcaster projet and trying to crack the paint a little bit. I tried heating in with a hair dryer then spraying frosted compressed air but nothing happened. This is a mexican body so the paint is poly, I guess. Is there another way to do this on this kind of finish? I'm thinking of putting the whole guitar in the oven than in the freezer. What do you think about it?

Only way to do it on poly is to use a razor blade. Hot and cold don't effect it the same way. It's a much more elastic material.

Axis is right, poly won't react the same as nitro. Especially when its thick poly like a lot of MIM bodies have. You could spray over the poly with some nitro, and then you can use your blowdrier compressed air technique. Also, you can goto a welding supply store or local livestock artificial insemination place and have them splash on some liquid nitrogen for you.

You can crack thick poly with shock. I've never tried this on a guitar, but you could try a thin piece of wood laid on the body and then whack it real hard with a hammer. You might just end up with big pieces flaking off - but that also might be desirable. There's a fine line between a relicked guitar and what looks like an elephant stampede was rerouted through a music shop. :grin: Good luck with it - post pictures!

The look you're after won't be achieved on that poly finish. The only way I know of to get there would be to top-coat it in lacquer and then do the "freezer to heat" thing.

If you go the cover the poly with nitro route, I found out the hard way that nitro will crack if you use a buffer with too little polishing compound on it. This only took about 10 seconds. I hope my painful mistake can be a positive for you.

Big thanks evevyone!

But nitro stuff does not seems to be available in my canadian city (120 000) citizen. Same.

I guess I'll have to forget the idea.

Can you have ReRanch send spray cans of Nitro into Canada? Is this legal post 9/11?

no it's not... reranch does not ship this nasty stuff to canada
terrorists could use it to enhance the finish of thier weapons

That is a shame. A WMD in Surf Green would be very interesting.