MY JM-1 First ever build

[caseyone1]

Update:
Today my New Rosewood neck and Ash body arrived.
Tip for young players: Ash weighs about 3 times Alder, therefore the tone-wood is denser and hence the declaration it has less top-end attack when playing, more mid tones. I also noticed the really nice dark grains in the Ash which made me almost rethink the vision of a black guitar, but I committed, so...next time.

After Looking at my spectacular new body and neck I was surprised that the Blackwood neck was pre-cut to a Strat shape while the new rosewood was a paddle.


I followed the instructions online, and while I was happy with the new body it wasn't as snug as the last neck and body. I did the dry build...


...it all matched up, the string distance to the edges of the fretboard were pretty consistent and so I drilled my neck bolt-on holes...

...I designed a machine head and pencilled it in and cut it.

.....So here is a tip, if you go for a sharp look like I did, you are going to have a heap of sanding away tool marks on lots of edges.
Issue #1, getting in all the crevices deep enough to sand away all the tool marks...I had to wrap the sandpaper around some small jewellers files and also do stuff by hand, I will put the pics in the following post...

[caseyone1]

...So here is the sanding stuff for the machine head......
Here are the tool marks from the band saw......
Eventually I got to finish it up.
Another tip: sharp little points can be chipped off and made blunt. Probably wouldn't choose this again as a method of shaping.
So what was once clean sharp cuts and points, some are a little blunter...
Finished machine head and sanded....
I continued to sand the body and that has its own set of challenges, mainly because of the dark and varied grain, you need to use your hands like reading braille to find the tool marks. If I was going for a natural finish I probably wouldn't bother being so picky, but because I am going for a solid colour, I really need to consider the final body finish. I don't want any ripples in it at all if I can help it.
So that is ongoing at the moment...

[caseyone1]

Sanded the body, off to Bunnings tomorrow to get some sanding sealer clear, some Frog tape and a water based black gloss and some clear coat.
ANY TIPS on this plan please?

I am going for the :
1. Feast Watson Clear Sanding sealer, hit the body and head stock with that. Wait an hour.
2. Light Sand with 220 grit
3. Hit it with a centre ball of Dy-Mark Gloss Wildfire red acrylic wait 1 hour, hit it again wait one hour.
4. Hit the back, edges and head stock with some Dy-Mark Gloss black wait one hour, hit it again.
5. 24 hours later repeat the Red centre and Blacks wait 48 hours.
6. Dulux Durmax gloss clear spray. leave it for a week.

Is there anything I will regret here? IF you say, "Don't go water based", that's totally OK.

Thanks in Advance.
Steve