A brand new custom Bailey 30 years old!

Here’s the body before starting the aging process. It has been sprayed but not polished. Normally we would take extreme care and attention and several hours to achieve a perfect gloss. In this case I just threw it on the bench and set about it with some nearby tools! The picture was supplied by Gavin to give me an idea how much aging was required.

Sandpaper was used for wearing the finish. 30 yrs of dents and bashes were carefully added including some serious gouge marks. I slammed the case on it a few times….. I have to admit it was a lot of fun but painful at the same time……

Only one way to get an authentic cigarette burn. It is normally between the E and A tuners but Gavin wanted a custom ‘burn’.

Steeping in Etching fluid aged the hardware. The only problem was working out how long to leave them in for- about 48hrs did the trick…….More sanding, dinks and dents…..We learned a few more words like this….dings….bishes, boshes, bashes, mashes, …and smashes, scrapes and scratches.

Relic’ing a guitar turns out to be quite labour intensive. It took quite a while to make it look natural and not just like a new guitar that has been dropped. It was certainly worth all the hard work just to see the obvious glee it gave Gavin. Who wants a new guitar when you can have a RELIC!