Sanding Finished...For Now

I'm a bit late posting this but I spent some time sanding down the body by hand on Sunday afternoon, to remove the last bits of paint from inside the horns and to try to remove at least some of the white residue that was still there over most of it. The paint actually came off more easily than I expected, with a left-over piece of coarse sandpaper from the power sander and a bit of elbow grease. I'm really glad I didn't try to do the whole body by hand though!

The result looks like this:

Still a bit of the residue left in there but that's OK for now.

I then got my sanding block and some coarse sandpaper and went over the whole body bit by bit just to give it a once-over; it seems to have helped a bit, and although it's not all that easy to see from the pictures I definitely managed to get rid of some of the whiteness. It's probably more noticable in the rib and arm cuts, and round the edges, due to the darker colour of the edges of the plywood.

Back:

Front:

It's a long way from perfect, but it's better than it was and that's all that matters for now. I had planned to spend some more time sanding it down, getting it into an even better state, but then I realised that there's not a lot of point at this stage. Once I'm done cutting/carving down the body to lose some weight, I'll have to sand it all down properly ready for painting, both the bits that are modified and the bits that are unchanged, so it seemed a little unnecessary to go through it all at this point.

So the next task is to figure out and design exactly what I'm going to with it, and then actually start some woodworking. The really daunting stuff begins here :-)

Since I already posted about some of my ideas regarding what I could do, I'm going to work a little on refining the plans (and picking exactly which idea(s) to go for) over the next few days and then hopefully post something a bit more definitive soon. Something of a plan is already formulating, but as before, any ideas and feedback would be appreciated!

Nineteen Layer Cake

This picture illustrates very nicely the layers of the plywood - all nineteen of them:

You can also see a few dents in the edge of the body - somehow these dents (which were clearly visible in the surface before I sanded the paint off) have had the paint pushed into them, rather than the dent going through the paint to the wood like most of the other dings and marks that were in the body. I decided against trying to sand the paint out of these with the power sander as that would've created a horrible flat patch in the edge of the body, so I'll see what comes off when I sand the body down by hand, and may end up having to paint over them to some extent.

I'm hoping to have some time this weekend to sand off the remaining paint inside the horns, and the remaining residue over the whole body too. Then it'll be time to start seriously deciding what I'm going to do about cutting down the body - I already have some more concrete ideas and plans than before, and even some "sketches", so maybe I'll post them up here at some point and ask for comments :-)

Stripped

Finally found the time to finish the sanding today - by taking this afternoon off work. Another 4hrs today to add to the 4hrs last week, and the body is now almost completely free of paint. Thankfully I didn't have to buy a new filter for the sander to get it usable again, I just had to glue the filter down over the air outlet to stop the dust bypassing the filter.

Like last time there were no major hiccups, although as expected there were a couple of bits inside the horns that the power sander simply couldn't reach; actually in the end I was pleased with how much I was able to do in there. The front of the body was pretty easy to finish, the sides (being curved) were a bit fiddly in places but not too much trouble.

A few pics, the first one is after an hour or so, the front of the body now paint-free but the sides still not done:

Secondly, a "during" shot of doing the end of the body:

A couple of shots of the remaining paint inside the horns, first the upper:

...and secondly the lower horn - somewhat more paint left here due to the tighter nature of the shape of the horn:

Lastly, a picture of the whole body:

I might post a couple more pics at some point in the next few days, especially to highlight the plywood!

Next task will be to sand off those last bits of paint by hand, then sand down the whole body to get rid of the white residue that's left over most of it, which I assume is remnants of whatever primer/sealer/undercoat was used beneath the paint.