Left-Handed Jazzmaster: DONE!

That was the quickest, and one of the most fun projects to date. Enjoy the pictures. High res versions here in the gallery

Clearcoats

My dad did the next three coats of clear on the Ice Blue. Friday we'll mount the bridge, and wet sand it. At that point we'll decide if we want to do coats 12-15.

Hey GOOGLE! Screw you!

That's right, Google, you can censor me if you want (you own blogspot), but screw you!

You're killing me over here. Something tells me you're not sorry either. I want to love you so bad, Google. You're faster, and better in every way. You have my email, my maps, my searching, and my local results loyalty.

Except at work. For the past week, my organization apparently resembles spyware. I work for Broward County Public Schools, you know, the 6th largest school district in the nation. Home to one of the largest Private WANs in the country. That's right, the country. We have hundreds of thousands of computers running behind proxies on some of the fastest internet connections available. We do a LOT OF GOOGLING. So when I (a tech) go to my camino bar and google "OS X force Adobe Reader PDF" and I get the above page (after, what I might add is a huge wait for my metro ethernet connection), and have to type in Yahoo, and do my search there.

You know what's scaring me? Yahoo's not as crappy as it used to be. They have a suggest feature. Did they rip it off from you? Yes. But guess what. They've got the balls to put it on their main page, not as a beta! And while we're at it, now that I've been using Gmail for THREE YEARS with nary an outage, do you think we can stop calling it a beta? It's a little embarassing for both of us, don't you think? So yeah. You're making me use Yahoo. Be careful, if I do it much longer, I might get to like it.

And let's talk about this block. I know. My ip comes through as 169.139.1.20, and it appears that about 10,000 other computers are the same IP address too. Wow, that's a lot. No kidding. We're using a proxy. Let's take a look at the domain name behind that suspicious 169 address. Broward.K12.FL.US . . . Does THAT sound like spyware to you? Seriously, Google. Get it together. I KNOW Educational Technology Services has contacted you. Figure it out. I have to wonder, if you flag and persecute every large organization that uses a proxy (i.e. values its security and privacy)? Do you do this to the federal government? I wonder, does the NSA use Google? They probably use Ask.com.

The daily HOTNESS.

The blue has been sanded with 1000, 1500, and 2000 grit, wet, and it's now smooth enough to stripe and clear.

So then after that, I obsessed about a number of things for a couple hours. How much residue would various masking materials (Pinstriping, frisket film, blue painter's tape) leave on the finish? Would peeling them lift my ice Blue? Would they be porous and allow lacquer to bleed through?

After a while I just said, screw it. I masked the bottom edge with painter's tape, then the interior lines with pinstriping, and the top edge with thicker pinstriping. After about 20 minutes of sticking and re-sticking the lines in place, I was ready. It was mostly freehand, but it turned out 99.5% perfect.

I sprayed 1 heavy coat of olympic white over the masking and immediately removed it. The stripes came out PERFECT. See for yourself:



The fiesta Red is fighting us. We're having to sand the Warmoth neck; while the Mighty Mite neck I had laying around fit PERFECTLY in the pocket, the Warmoth is a little too snug and the pre-drilled bolt holes don't line up. So we're adjusting that, and while my dad did that, I foiled the pockets. I found that I had just enough to do it. I tore the tape by hand (it tears very straight), and just stuck it on. It's really not that hard. Then I used the foam that the SD's shipped with to mount them; you can see it's a little tall but it provides the appropriate pressure when you put the covers on.

Ooooo . . . swirly.

Polishing on the Fiesta Red has begun; swirl remover is now being used to remove the scuffs from the lacquer.




The Ice Blue has had 4 light coats of clear, and still feels rough to the touch. When dry, we will sand the "paint stick" to see if it dulls the metallic finish too much, and if so, spray two more heavier coats onto the body before sanding. After that initial sanding, we spray the competition stripe on, and then 6-9 more coats of clear!

The Ever-Irascible Ice Blue Metallic

I think my feelings might be best expressed


By a monologue from the movie Men in Black:


"[Ice Blue] makes this look GOOD."


SUPERSTAR!

Oh yeah.

The lefty is moving along quite nicely. This is round two of four of clear coats. All the parts are in. The righty is still waiting for color, one pickup, and a neck.

Double Jazzmaster Build Update

Well it's been too long since I updated on the progress of the Great Jazzmaster Build of 2008.

Shaping, sanding, grain filling, and sealing of the bodies is complete. . . .











And now we have 5 coats of fiesta red on the lefty. :)