I followed advice from a few of the guys here. Nitromors worked fine. It took no time at all stripping the paint to within a whisker of bare wood.
Its looking like this now.......
The surface still feels very smooth. Not like untreated wood. It feels like there's still a layer of laquer on there. I've only used Nitromors & a scraper so far. No sandpaper.
QUESTIONS :
1) There's clearly nothing visible yet. Should I hit it with sandpaper? The Nitromors has pretty much done its job, right?
2) Have I gone as far down as possible? Maybe this is pretty much bare wood & the original colour has just soaked into the grain?
3) Am I wasting my time?
4) Were the cavity dates pencilled & if not permanent a trace would they leave? I could very easily oversand & destroy it, right?
I'm of the impression that I can get deeper down & still (maybe) reveal something as I did originally sand the body down to clean, bare wood. I just never bothered with the cavities. I also never payed attention to what colours were underneath the crappy refin (reckless youth and all that).
One interesting thing is that the base (original) colour appears to be red. Remember, when I bought this someone had done a cheapo spray job on it. A kind of off-black (hints of dark brown). The seller swore it was a refin & not the original colour that'd faded to a browny/black.
Anyway. Has anyone got any suggestions??
