Between each thin coat (when fully dry) I’ve been sanding the surface of the body with 1500 grit Micro Mesh sanding cloth wrapped over a semi-hard foam block.

After a few coats of sanding sealer, I’ve started applying the black lacquer which I plan to use as the final finish for the body.

Again, I am applying very thin coats and sanding between each to build up the color slowly and evenly. I will continue this process until I’ve built up enough layers to achieve the finish I am looking for.

More to come…

Watching him work, I realized that he was using the same paints and brushes that my father used when he did “sign painting.” So, I asked Scratch about this and discovered that these same “One Shot” brand paints were what he preferred to use for his work.

So, I purchased the “Orange Flake” model, intending to try my hand at some custom, hand painted graphics.

Step one in my experiment was to purchase the materials I needed. I purchased a quarter pint of One Shot: White Enamel and Black, and two brushes from TCP Global.

I also went to some local automotive body work stores and purchased some rolls of automotive quality masking tapes.

Step One

The first step in my project was to remove the face shield and center snap-on button and mask off a center stripe about 2 1/4″ wide down the center of the helmet. I then applied the first layer of One Shot white enamel as shown.

Step Two

When that paint was dry, the second step was to mask off the first set of black squares and paint with the One Shot Black enamel as shown.

Step Three

Finally, when this was dry, I removed all the masking tape and masked off the center row of squares, and filled in with Black. Once dry, I removed the masking, and touched up any small imperfections to complete the project.

After re-installing the center snap button and putting the face shield back on, the helmet was ready to use.

Now, I’m thinking about more projects and designs I can do in the future.

First, I researched everything I could about the guitar Jerry was playing in the video and discovered it was custom-made for him by the Fender Pro Shop. In that research process I discovered a guy named Lonnie Specter who makes lap steel conversion necks for Fender Telecasters and Stratocasters, which he calls “RedNecks” as well as a modified bridge saddle he calls the “Bad Ass Bridge.” I purchased both.

Next I needed a Telecaster body and all the rest of the pickups, controls and hardware. Having already ordered tons of guitar parts and repair tools from Stew-Mac when building my Martin D-18 Herringbone kit, I found all of what I needed online at Stewart McDonald’s Guitar Supply.

Yesterday I began the build process.

• Step 1: Align the neck to the body and drill the holes for the 4 screws and neck mounting plate

• Step 2: Position the bridge, pickup and saddle plate and drill the 4 mounting screw holes.
• Step 3: Position the neck pickup and mounting ring, and drill those mounting holes.
• Step 4: Position the control plate and drill two holes and mount with screws.

• Step 5: Position the electrosocket jack mount, drill the pilot holes and mount with 2 screws.

• Step 6: Position the strap button, drill the pilot hole and mount.

After making sure everything would fit correctly I removed it all and am now ready to do the finishing of the body and neck before final assembly and project completion. The final finish choices are: natural maple neck and headstock with clear satin lacqer finish, black gloss lacquer over an ash wood body with chrome hardware.

More to come…

There is a campaign underway by Cultivate Wines, where they will give a deserving charity a $50,000 grant based upon an online voting site. You can help Project Hopeful by visiting this web page and “Voting” for them on a daily basis until the campaign ends.

http://www.cultivatewines.com/cause/28670/

Please Vote 4 my film THE WALL OF DEATH@vimeofestawards

https://vimeo.com/awards/vote/documentary

4 THE LOVE OF 2 WHEELS

A little film I’ve been wanting to make, since I saw them when I was a small boy.
The Ken Fox Troupe.
One of the last remaining traditional family of daredevil wall riders to travel europe and the British Isles.

Hope International released this video suggesting the idea that we all take the money we make on that one day, and re-invest it in a way that could multiply good for many people for many years to come, through micro-enterprise loans.

I’m doing it. Join me.

For more context, history and background on this topic, the first post is found at: Headstand Media Bank of Hope

An earlier update is found at: Headstand Media Bank of Hope Update

Today I went to the 30th floor cafeteria of my office building to get some lunch. They had a station there featuring DR food!

So, I helped myself to:

• Potato-shrimp fritter
• Vegetable rice
• Fried chicken
• Red beans
• Broccoli (not sure this is “DR”)

My "DR Lunch"

Lance Ulanoff writes yesterday on Mashable that “Adobe confirmed what reports were saying all morning: It’s done with the Flash Mobile Player and has now thrown its lot in with the HTML5 crowd — for mobile at least.”

What I find amazing about this is that I am old enough (57) to have lived through the entire birth, life and death of a very powerful and ubiquitous technology. When Adobe purchased Macromedia in 2005 and got Flash technology with the deal, I thought it would be around forever!

When I start thinking about it, this technology birth, life and death phenomenon is happening more and more in my life.

Example 1: My wife and I are watching “The West Wing” TV series on DVD, having never watched them when the series was popular in the 90′s. I noticed the other night that C.J. put an Iomega Zip Disk into an external Zip Drive to retrieve some hot political inside information. I’ve got boxes full of those disks, and no drive or computer that will read them anymore! I’ve already thrown away all of my floppy disks from the Mac OS versions 1-9 days. Where is Iomega now? Who owns a floppy drive?

Example 2: I remember when Adobe “Shockwave” was THE future for interactive multimedia! Only to be replaced by that newer technology called “Flash” that Adobe got when it bought Macromedia, who bought it from some guy named Jonathan Gay, who says he got the original idea from playing with Lego’s!

Example 3: Remember MySpace? ‘Nuf said.

Change — rapid change — is just the world we live in. For better or worse, there is no stopping it.

This leads me to reflect on people I know who don’t like change and work very hard to resist it — especially in my age bracket and older. They tend to say things like, “it was different when I was a kid,” or that they prefer the older technologies over the newer ones because they are “better.” Why is that? Are they really?

It seems to me that when Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press (moveable type), he not only opened the door to the masses being able to read the Bible on their own and in their own language without someone else telling them what it said and meant — thus setting the stage for the Protestant Reformation — he also opened the door to mass character smear campaigns, the rampant spread of published lies and propaganda, and the eventual entry of written and graphic pornography — to name just a few consequences.

The same thing can be said of every other communication technology advancement since then: the camera, motion pictures, telegraph, phonograph, telephone, radio, television, the Internet, mobile phones, Google’s search engine and Facebook.

I guess I am not like many in my generation. I prefer to embrace the reality of change, and the increasing rate of it, rather than to pretend it doesn’t exist or that it is all bad. I prefer to make the best of it and be a small force for employing it for good.

Good bye, Flash. Hello, HTML5.