Stripping polyester finish off a guitar

[choucas09]

Anybody have any wisdom on this. Some time I'd like to get my rosewood Tele back to the wood.

[tomjackson]

I did my 90's strat.  I used a gas soldering iron with a burner attachment.  Any heat gun will do, just heat the poly up until is starts to bubble then scr@pe it with a scr@per.

Don't hold it too close though as you migth burn the wood, not the end of the world but it might need a lot of sanding out.   A Tele would be a lot easier than a strat as bends and contours are the hardest part.

Just take your time, it takes a while and is hard work. 

[choucas09]

Thanks I didn't know you could heat it off. I was envisaging hours of dust with a sander.

[Doctor X]

I attacked my 2008 sunburst strat with some fine steel wool last weekend.  My initial, beer-fuelled plan was to get rid of the shiny, plastic coated look with the steel wool, before moving on to wet/dry paper after that to smooth things out a bit.  As it turns out I was really happy with the result with just the steel wool so won't bother doing anything else with it.  I thought it would look all scratched but far from it, I rubbed in the direction of the grain and I think it looks much, much better than before.

Lot's of dust everywhere though and the steel wool tends to break down and the bits get stuck to the pickups.  Last night I ordered an aged pick-guard with Apache's so am looking forward to getting them installed!