Spent a bit of time getting properly started on this today:
First off, a healthy slap of very unhealthy paintstripper in the cavities, left to steep in clingfilm a la Dexter:
An hour or two later - cleaned up pretty well. It was definitely blonde - I left a couple of spots in the bridge pickup cavity, and there was more in the bottoms of all the cavities.
There was a 'WA' which appears to have been on top of the sealer layer but under the blonde beneath the bridge pickup, and an big '10' under the neck pup. Possibly a 'V' near the edge of the neck pocket, too, but very faint. I presume all fairly typical for '65'?
Used a Jag guard template to chop the battery hole out cleanly. I presume it's some kind of alder, but it's a different species to anything I've handled before - smells super old when the router hits it!
The rhythm cavity of a JM template matched the lower carve-up pretty well:
I'd always assumed the arm contour was done by hand on a sander, but amazingly this one was almost identical to a '69 JM I refinished years ago and took a template from!
One last chop and change:
Last up, I cut new pieces from an old scrap of alder on the bandsaw and finessed them on the sander, then glued and clamped them for the night:
Really good fun
Idiot.
