I bought this shell about five years ago and it has been laying around my office ever since. The only reason I picked it up was that it is a somewhat rare configuration for a 14" in that the tom mount and badge are positioned correctly for left-hand side mounting ala JB. The other cool things are that it's a 3-ply shell with clear maple interior and the internal tone control is in the correct bonham position as well. It's a black cortex wrap that someone spray bombed red...eehhwww. Fortunatley, they didn't do a very good job as some of the paint chipped off with my fingernail. Since I just picked up a near mint condition 14x26 red sparkle bd w/rail consolette, I figured it would be a good time to takle this project. Here are a couple of before shots:

[IMG]http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk298/stramm8/Ludwig%20Thermogloss/IMG_0573.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk298/stramm8/Ludwig%20Thermogloss/IMG_0575.jpg[/IMG]

One of the reinforcement rings was starting to separate so I glued that back up the other day and went about scraping off the paint this afternoon. I used a flat head screwdriver, a razor knife and a putty knife. Suprisingly, it didn't leave any scratches. All of the imperfections were there before it was painted. There was also some overspray on the re-rings and the interior. I used some denatured alchohol and 0000 steel wool to remove it and once it was clean, I rubbed on a coat of tung oil to protect any exposed wood. I'll put a coat of varnish on some other time:

[IMG]http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk298/stramm8/Ludwig%20Thermogloss/IMG_0660.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk298/stramm8/Ludwig%20Thermogloss/IMG_0662.jpg[/IMG]

I pulled the hardware off a maple cortex shell, cleaned it up a little bit and slapped it together. Here is the finished product:

[IMG]http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk298/stramm8/Ludwig%20Thermogloss/IMG_0665.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk298/stramm8/Ludwig%20Thermogloss/IMG_0666.jpg[/IMG]