How To Age and Ware Your Finish

There is always that one point in time where you wanted to take your Strat or Les Paul and ware down the finish on them to show arm ware, buckle rash, and belly ware.

What you're going to need is Sandpaper (medium and fine), very, fine, steel wool and lastly, a steady hand.

What you want to do is sand down the finish off the area you want ware to show with the medium grit sandpaper. Then you want to sand down that same area with the fine sandpaper just to smooth things out. Now if you want to keep it light and show minimal ware use the fine sand paper instead of using the medium grit and transferring to the fine grit. After that you want to dust off your finish and check your work and see if you're happy with it. You then want to take your steel wool and rub it on the rest of the finish. You want to rub in circles because that will get the job quicker and show less scratches on the finish from the steel wool. After that you should be done. But wait! what about the buckle rash? Well, here's my tip to you. You can either play your guitar with a big belt buckle on, or you can do the Tom Murphy method, which is to take your keys and a few other materials made of metal and drop them on the back where the belt buckle would be. This will simulate buckle ware. I hope you succeed with this and Good Luck.