New Chemical Eats the Toughest Guitar Finishes

Newport – DE, Cara Guitars claims the development of a new chemical that can remove any finish from wood, with a simple bath. Company President, Jim Cara adds, “We can now remove the hardest, most chemically resistant finishes with ease even from the most delicate vintage instruments, with no harm to the wood. I’d like to say we’ve developed Evil Microbe Pac-Men that only eat paint and specific plastic and they dislike the taste of timber.”

The company explains why a product like this is needed in the instrument industry.

Gibson Guitars have been right to form and stuck to Lacquer finishes for the most part. Stripping a Gibson (Not Epiphone) has been as easy as repeated washing with Lacquer thinner or MEK.
However, Fender, Ibanez, Washburn, Dean, BC Rich ESP, and more have used the toughest Polyester based paint imaginable. Anyone who has tried to remove these finishes with ANY available paint remover, aircraft paint remover, military solvents,  hot dip, or gel coat stripper has been out of luck. Even in the case of Fender guitars where the top coat of Lacquer removes with ease, the sealer coat is impenetrable.

Web blogs, message boards, and forums are full of solutions ranging from belt sanders to heat guns to blow torches and scrapers. In most cases, much of the wood is removed leaving a thinner body than original. I’ve challenged any chemist I knew to work with me and come up with a formula, and now we finally have one that works.

This solvent is incredibly caustic. It won’t be sold to the public. The solvent must be used in such quantity that the guitar be submerged entirely at room temperature for at least an hour. The solvent only eats the paint and sealer, it stops at the wood, leaving you a perfectly clean stripped instrument when you remove it from the vat. No scraping, No Sanding, No work. We apply a dry neutralizer to the guitar and let it recover to the moisture content measurement it was when it arrived before we return it to you

We have experimented with the chemical on every available brand, and the results have been fantastic, The perfect solution to refinish the most delicate instrument or the thickest coated import metalflake, airbrushed, graphic clear coated beast. We will be offering the stripping process to professional shops in the coming months.

We’re filming a video presentation as well as documentation, while we await a Material Declaration Sheet to get approval for storage at our location.