First guitar I put together I accidentally "relic'ed" when I tried to hammer in the rear string ferrules without lube or light sanding of the holes and the impact of my hits, lifted the poly finish around the area. If anyone ever asks about it, I usually say it's buckle rash :laughing7:
Hopefully future projects won't suffer the same relic'ing.
I dunno why some folks do this, the extremes of it are a black art in a lot of ways (Dipping pickup covers in tea and coffee to discolour, adding rust etc.).
I can understand someone trying to completely replicate a bashed up classic. Pro musos like Neil Young with his Old Black and Clapton when he had Blackie, must dread going out on the road with their fav. guitars out of fear they will get damaged or stolen. That's where the relicing of new guiatrs would come in handy - replicating an old guitar to look like the original. Or the guy who did a very accurate replica of Young's Old Black, the art involved in doing all the bumps and scratches on that guitar was very interesting.
A lot of classic guitars (like say Joe Strummer's Tele, Steve Jones original white LP Custom, or Elvis Costello's Jazzmaster) have had blood spilled on them in the name of music. You may try to replicate that but you can't recreate the mojo around those instruments!
