newbie spraying procedure issues

I am nearing the completion of a Tele build and am starting to think about the finishing of the body.
At the moment it is totally unfinshed but has been sanded.
I want to do a 50's butterscotch blonde finish.
I have been looking around on the net for how to do this.
I am a bit confused.
Some places say you have to do a coat of clear then sand then repeat process a number of times.
Then spray with tinted gloss to get the butterscotch colour and then sand then add more coates of clear and sand a number of more times etc etc while waiting for it to dry inbetween each coat.
I must admit I am totally new to this and have no experience in guitar spraying but this all seems like alot of fuss to me.
The idea of Fender was to mass produce guitars at a fast rate.
So did Fender do all this to their guitar finishes or is it just people now days just trying to get real nice finishes.
Surely Fender wouldn't and don't take this long to spray every new guitar they build.
Would Fender just grain fill.
Spray white.
Spray with tint (to get the butterscotch colour).
Then just finish with clear gloss to finish?
Any info on this would be great.
If it has to be done a certain way so be it but like I say I just can't imagine Fender took that much time over it?

If you're going for the now-classic butterscotch finish, then you're right, Fender didn't go to that much trouble. In fact, they just painted them blonde or MK white and just let time take over. Most butterscotch on vintage Fenders is age of the finish rather than finish itself.

As for replicating it, there are a couple different options. Several finish suppliers have tried to replicate the color, with varying degrees of success, though that's up for debate. Using one of these is probably the easiest way to get a butterscotch finish, provided you're not going for something exact. And then some people buy dyes and mix their own. A rather daunting task if you have little or no experience with finishing things.

Then there's the tinted clear option. Do you want tinted clear over an otherwise natural finish? Do you want tinted clear over a blonde or white finish?

And of course you can just paint the guitar blonde, clear it with untinted nitro and start waiting.

As for the layers of tinted and untinted clear, I believe that has to do with acquiring a certain depth to the finish. Also, as for sanding, that is typically used to fix screw-ups. New coats of nitro melts into previous coats very well.

Prior to putting your colour on...and nitro etc...the reason why people grain fill and seal is to get the pores filled and the body flat for lacquering.If you just lacquer over the body as it is...the lacquer,coloured or clear,will just soak into the wood.If you don't mind the pores etc showing then you've no worries,but it really soaks it up.
My builds...Ash eg. I'd grain fill twice...sand and seal maybe 3 times...colour..maybe seal twice again...then clearcoat with nitro sometimes up to 16 coats.Each build is a little different though.
Alder takes less time as there's seldom grain filling to be done.
If you want a smooth glass like finish...patience I'm afraid is key to getting it well done and you have to, to some degree, go through the whole process.....but again it's up to the individual.

You've probably been there, but the Reranch website (http://www.reranch.com/101.htm) has excellent instructions on how to get a really superb finish. Also consider Dan Erlewine's book on finishing and his DVD, both available from Stewmac, if you want to actually watch a finish being applied.

And when they all talk of sanding between coats, it's just flattening down the finish with a fine grade of paper. It doesn't take very long.

I note you hail from Bognor Regis ,which last time I looked was in the UK.Try Manchester Guitar tech at the following .He does the matches and its all nitro which is getting expensive in the UK everywhere as it gets harder to buy .I have his vintage white and it looks good quality .I am about to get some Dakota red for a project.
[URL="http://www.manchesterguitartech.co.uk/lacquer.html"[URL]

ok I have been doing a bit more research on this.
Below is a rough idea in stages of how to do it

stage 1) grain fill

stage 2) seal

stage 3) a number of white coats

stage 4) a number of tinted gloss (to make it appear yellow/amber)

stage 5) a number of clear gloss

stage 6) sand

stage 7) buff and polish

my problem is that this procedure in this a way is to recreate the early 50's colour (which we now call butterscotch blone).
By adding stage 4 makes the colour basicaly appear aged.
Originally they wouldnt have done this.
Surely Fender would have missed out stage 4? and it is stage 5 that has aged over the years.
So if im trying to prematurely age this guitar wouldnt I put in stage 4 but miss out stage 5.
So the guitar has 2 layers (white and tinted gloss) not three layers (white, tinted gloss then clear gloss).
Wouldnt the point of stage 5 be to preserve the colour which they wouldnt have done because stage 4 was what they were preserving with.
If this all makes sense to people lol?

I am trying to figure this out too. I think the point is (and I might be waaaya) off on this is to use tinted coats to get the colour you want and the rest is to complete the coating.

I am doing (if I can ever find the supplies.. no one ships to Canada) a 59 musicmaster in desert sand. I was planing on using a cardboard template to mask of the neckplate, pickguard and bridge area. I would then do a couple of coats tinted, remove the templates, and keep going. That way it would have that unaged under the pickguard look.

Dont know it it would work but worth a try.

So if im trying to prematurely age this guitar wouldnt I put in stage 4 but miss out stage 5.
So the guitar has 2 layers (white and tinted gloss) not three layers (white, tinted gloss then clear gloss).
Wouldnt the point of stage 5 be to preserve the colour which they wouldnt have done because stage 4 was what they were preserving with.
If this all makes sense to people lol?

You're right, the stright clear at the end wouldn't be there on the old classics, but trying to wetsand a tinted clear and not have a patchy tint might be tough. I think that's the reason most would use straight clear over the tinted clear...also it adds quite a bit of depth to the final result. I went with a VERY thin clear over my tinted clear and ended up sanding through down to the tinted clear, but it still worked out and looks great...just made it a bit more pale...more like highway one look to it.

I just went through this process on my build...very tedious, but it turned out ok. I used aniline dyes from lmii for the tinted clear and color tone white pigment from stew-mac for the translucent white coats. All tones and dyes in deft clear thinned for spraying. This was my first finish with a spray gun rig and you'll make a lot of mistakes along the way. Be patient and don't rush...those are the biggest lessons I've learned. The next one will be exponentially better than this past one because of the invaluable lessons learned.