Slow progress

Well it's been at least two weeks since I even touched the guitar.  I've been too busy on the weekends and just too tired during the week to work on it.  However, this weekend I got some free time so decided to work on removing the poly-coat finish over the area of the body that I'll be carving.  This was a pain to remove and took about 3 hours just to do the hair/body.  I used my gouges to basically shave the 1mm thick layer of poly-coat (or whatever finish is on this thing).  I could have sanded it, but I don't have a power sander and doing it by hand would have been terrible and messy.  Plus, I'm having to re-draw each section as I remove the top finish layer since that is where the outlines are.  Not fun.  But now that this chore is finished, I can finally start to do some actual carving.  Once I get finished carving the entire thing, I'll use a power sander to remove the poly-coat from the non-cosmetic surfaces such as underneath the pick guard and the back of the guitar.  I want to have raw wood exposed on all exterior surfaces before I begin applying my own finish, otherwise it will be uneven and maybe even discolored wherever the poly-coat is.

Here are some pics of the progress from today:

Removing the poly-coat by hand

Darker areas still have the poly-coat

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