Cutting Necks, Fitting Hardware and more blue paint

A few developments since the last post:

The Les Paul, with the colour finished has been fitted with hardware - before and after photos below:

Some of the hardware is better quality than that supplied with the kit. The scratchplate and humbuckers are from http://www.axesrus.com/.

The headstock has been cut to a Les Paul style shape too and sprayed black - but I don't have a photograph of this at the moment.

The Rick body, which was looking very green due to the yellowness of the wood underneath has had many, many more coats of clear blue lacquer to try to bring some more blue to the colour. Finally, it is looking really good. It's not blue like the originally intended colour, but is now a fairly deep turquoise which looks quite spectacular - far better than the photos do justice.

The "Sunburst" finish is more apparant in real life too with the outsides of the guitar appearing a deeper turquiose than the centre.

The neck has been cut into a Rick style shape and sprayed the same colour as the body. The next step for this neck is to attempt the translucent dark/black areas that feature on a real Rickenbacker. We were unable to find black, transparant nitrocellulose lacquer like the paint that the rest of the guitar is finished in, but have found some "Transparent Black" aerosol spray from SS20.com, a site that sells aerosol paint for skateboards and graffiti art.

The cans are cheap and we're going to test some of the spray out before applying it to the neck in case we ruin what we've already done! If it is suitable then we should be able to mask parts of the neck and spray the sides of the front and the centre of the back with transparent black.

Finally, a couple of pictures showing the guitars side by side in their current state and the Rick body and neck side by side: