The old lacquer on this project is badly scratched and its hard to spot any dings and dents in the wood.  I decided to sand the lacquer off as it looked quite thin.  I used 80 grit paper wrapped around a block for the flat surfaces and a foam sanding pad for the curves and radiused edges.  Once the bulk of the lacquer was off I switched to 120grit paper. I now started to spot the dings and dents and a bit of chipped wood.

I dug out an old travel steam iron (it was new really but I commandeered it for the job) and applied a damp cloth to the dings.  I rested the hot iron on the cloth for a few seconds until I heard the steam hissing.  If you are lucky the dented wood takes up the moisture from the steam and swells back to it's original form.  In this case, the dings remained slightly depressed so the next job was to fill the dings and chips with wood filler.

Once dried the woodfiller was sanded back and I continued to sand the body smooth.  I repeated the sanding process with 240 grit and finally 320 grit. The body was now ready to paint.  I wiped it down with a tak-rag and made a hanger for the body from a piece of ply. The neck socket already had a hole drilled through the centre so I simply bolted the plywood to the neck socket.

I sprayed a white base coat over the body until I'd built an opaque coat.  Then I flatted this back lightly with 2000grit Wet N Dry.  I was really just knocking off any dust specks in preparation for the main body colour. 

I chose Tonetech's Dakota Red .  I used an Aerosol Spraymaster to give me better control over the spraying.  I sprayed light coats about 15 minutes apart until I had a solid covering of colour. Even then I managed to get a run in the paint so I left it for a day then sanded the run out.  Another couple of coats, making 8 in total, and it was ready for lacquering.

I chose a pre-cat gloss lacquer .  I want a gloss finish and the clarity of the pre-cat lacquer meant the paint colour would remain true.  The pre-cat also dries quicker so I can get more coats on in a day.  I decided to use 2 cans of lacquer to get enough build to flat back.