So went ahead and decided to do the text with the water slide decals. Gotta say it made life a lot easier. Would have cried if I had to try and paint them by hand.

Painting is almost %100 done. A few areas to touch up and finish. But over all I’m pretty happy with how it came out.

Now an apologie to all the purests. I couldn’t match the paint, and the paint I had bought was touch and go with coverage and mixing (generally horrible, mostly nice shades of brown). Sooo, it isn’t orginal. Learned a ton of leasons that I have added into the do’s and don’ts file. Going forward I know a lot better. But I am of the camp that as long as it plays good and looks good  I can let it slide if it isn’t %100 correct. So I went with what I could do now. So general idea is to use varathane and in a perfect world, it should be technically possible to undo everything and start over again.

Still… I’m happy with it. And pretty giddy with how the text came out.

Next step will be the inserts and painting the black around them and the text on top.

Anyways here are some of the newest pictures.

Final addition, just cause it makes me smile.