Thanks for the tips Simon, I’ll persist. I think I’ll do a second coat of timbermate a bit less runny.

As long as the strings are equally spaced from the sides of the neck and you've got the centre of the bridge on the neck centreline
I’ve offset the bridge centre approx 2mm to the bass side - my understanding is the angled wraparounds need to be offset because the strings wrap on an angle?

The veneer looks like maple to me
Sorry, I wasn’t talking about the veneer, but what’s underneath it. It’s very soft and very open. It looks like some sort of meranti, but I’m from WA so I only know jarrah & radiata pine.