Armed with these parts and a bunch of photos I began to convert the body from a pristine item into SRV's used and abused strat. Actually, that was kind of fun once I got past the fear of destroying a perfectly good Fender strat body. First, I decided to re-rout the tremolo cavity for the left handed trem unit. Using templates that I downloaded from Stewart MacDonald I made a cardboard template of the necessary modifications using the original trem screw holes as a locator guide. Having a milling machine in my garage and a nice sharp set of 4 flute end mills was a definite plus. After laying out the proposed cuts in pencil on the body I went to work with the cutters and 10 minutes later the routing work was completed. Next I took a 1/4x3/4" thick plug made of poplar and fitted it to the trem slot on the treble side. I attached a spare pick guard as a guide for the next step, removal of finish. Using a pencil I outlined the areas of finish to be removed and went to work with a hand-held Dremel with a 1/2" coarse sanding drum. The edges of the remaining finish should be sharp because SRVs original finish actually flaked off rather than wore through so I wanted to maintain that illusion. Using the sanding drum I carefully followed all the outlines and created a bare wood margin around each area to be scraped off. Then came a lot of work with a freshly sharpened paint scraper to remove the bulk of the finish. I tried to be careful not to remove the underlying basecoat (Fullerplast) especially near the edges of the lacquer finish. Using photos of the original guitar, I added deep scratches with a 16D nail, removed small patches of finish with a sharp utility knife and created some gouges with the edge of a framing hammer. I think it took me a total of around three hours of work to fully remove the amount of finish required and to sand the bare areas first with 80 grit paper to even everything up and then 220 grit to smooth out the surfaces to simulate years of "rubbing and buffing".

Next I wanted to add the S.R. Vaughan to the back of the body. I took a photo of that area of the original body from a CD cover, cropped it and enlarged it on my computer until it printed out the correct size. I mounted the photo in the correct location and, using an old medium point ball point pen, I traced over the logo several times with a lot of force until it was embossed into the body. I then colored in the letters on the body using a black ink marker to complete the operation.

After I got the body to where I thought it looked right, the next step was to apply stain to simulate years of bare wood aging. I chose water based stains by Minwax because the water based pigments used are resistant to UV light, therefore resistant to fading. I purchased three colors, dark walnut, rosewood and a custom ebony color. I also purchased some water based wood conditioner to pretreat the areas to be stained. This "pre-stain" helps the wood to accept the stain more evenly. First, I used the dark walnut because if you look at Stevie's guitar, the bare wood looks brownish rather than black like on some relics I have seen. I ended up applying three coats allowing 24 hours drying time between coats. Then came the rosewood. Two coats of that stain brought out some nice highlights on the body.

Finally, I used the black around the edges of the guitar body to darken those areas. Lastly, I went back to the computer, blew up a photo of the front of Stevie's guitar that showed the light colored bare wood above the pick guard. I cut out the light bare wood area and used that as a template to remove stained finish with extra fine sandpaper and an ink eraser to simulate that appearance. The body was completed with a light overspray coat of (you guessed it) McFadden's Nitrocellulose guitar lacquer to not only seal the stained areas but to add some gloss to the original finish. The lacquer coats on the stained wood did not add any significant gloss to those areas but I still went over any bare wood areas carefully with 4-0 steel wool after allowing the lacquer to cure for two weeks

Now that the body was sufficiently distressed I turned my attention to the neck. I pulled all the old frets and the plastic (UGH) nut. I fashioned a replacement nut out of genuine bone and fit it to the neck. I used the original nut as a guide for string slot placement. I used my new fret radius machine to pre-bend the fret wire to the 7 1/4" radius required for this neck and installed new frets.

Thank God I already had the required tools, fret nippers, fret remover, radius blocks and files. The fret job took between 2-3 hours but looks great (Of Course). Next, I wanted to get rid of the Made In Mexico decal on the back of the head stock so using 320 grit adhesive backed sand paper on a block I carefully sanded down the finish until the decal was removed. Since Fender embeds the decal into the finish I didn't have to sand all the way through the lacquer. I then over sprayed the back of the head stock with a couple of coats of nitro and blended it in to the neck. I took 4-0 steel wool to the finish on the back of the fret board to degloss it and smooth it out for faster action. I installed a nice set of Fender Deluxe American tuners in place of the Kluson type, gold of course, and the neck was finished.

Now all I had to do was assemble the instrument. First, I added the neck loosely followed by the tremolo unit so I could properly locate the loaded pick guard to which I had already applied the prismatic SRV letters, again using photos of the original as a guide. Funny thing, but even though the body is a genuine Fender factory part and so is the pick guard, some of the screw holes in the guard didn't line up with the holes in the body. I therefore filled the original hole and redrilled as required. All holes are hidden anyway. After a little soldering work on the jack everything was installed. I then installed the spring claw in the back and four springs. Finally I located the "Custom" sticker and made sure that the corner was curled up as it should be.

I used a set of "Fattie" strings using a .010 E string and set up the guitar for a high action because that is what Stevie did. He used thick strings with jumbo frets and a high setup to achieve his signature sound.