Tuesday arvo I slapped on some Zinssers, let it dry, sanded back, gave it another coat and let it dry overnight.
Wednesday I got stuck into the sanding in a big way, and got it to a reasonable standard. A few visible dents and scratches, but I'm working to a deadline - so near enough is good enough. I sprayed a few coats of a nice regency red "pearl" rattlecan onto the body, taped and hung the neck to give it more of the same. At this point I'm pretty happy with the colour and sheen that the paint has. (no photos at this stage - anytime I wanted to take some snaps it was either too dark, or my phone was dead. :/)
So I push on, and around midnight, after a few hours to cure (yeah, I know) I sat down with one of my vinyl decals. My estimations were pretty good, the bridge and tail positions are slightly different to my original estimations, so I can't quite align the centre of the pattern between the two, but it still looks the goods. Happy with the position, I take off the backing and slowly and meticulously stick it on, smoothing out the bubbles and trimming the edges as I go. I trim around the neck pocket, poke holes for the bridge and test string the neck. Happy with the alignment and scale length, I glue it in, and leave it there for the night.
Thursday I didn't progress much. Between a bit of bronchitis, spending time with the family and rehearsal I only really managed to put together my "purfling cutter" - a length of 70x35mm treated pine with a bolt and spacer from a washing machine, and a scalpel blade nailed to the side of it. I wanted to basically cut the vinyl off about 6mm in from the edge of the guitar so it has a red border (see hte later pictures if that doesn't make sense) The idea was good, the execution not amazing - I left too much flex in the blade, so it was harder to maintain an even distance from the edge around the curves. So in the end, I used it for the straight lines, and cut the curves freehand.
Like anything with this build, it doesn't fare well under close scrutiny but looks pretty good from a distance. The cut was mostly clean, with a couple of ragged edges. Far more concerning was the entirely foreseeable lifting of paint as I pulled away the excess vinyl. I grabbed a scrap and sprayed a bit of paint onto it, hoping that I might be able to just wipe any overspray off the the vinyl. I'm partly right, because it does just wipe off, but also reacts with the black ink on the decal, which also wipes off. No go. So I stick on some trusty blue masking tape, and confirm that it pulls up without damaging the decal.
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