Part 11 - Painting
Sorry, I have not pictures of the paint process.

To prepare for painting, all assemblies to be painted were disassembled to the basic components, epoxy putty applied to rough spots and allowed to cure, wet-sanded with successively finer grades of sandpaper (to 600), washed with detergent, and left to dry completely.

While everything was drying, I ran to the auto supply store and procured a spray can of fast-drying white primer. I made another run to my local hobby shop and procured two spray cans of Tamiya TS-24 purple and one can of Tamiya TS-13 clear lacquer. I chose to use lacquer because it dries quickly, is easy to polish, and provides a durable finish. Lacquer fumes are horrendously toxic, especially damaging to your nervous system and lungs, so I did all my painting outside with appropriate respiratory protection. Because it was cold out, I pre-heated the paint cans in a sink full of warm water (less than 120º F (≈48.9º C)). This would also make the paint flow more smoothly.

I applied the primer to all the plastic parts, immediately moving each part into the garage after spraying, where it was slightly warmer, and left to dry. I left the parts to dry for several hours in the garage, then brought them into the house to dry overnight. This minimized the fumes in the house (virtually undetectable by that time). Two coats of primer were applied.

I then applied three light coats of color, letting the first two coats dry for an hour in the garage and an hour in the house, but following the same wait for the third color coat as for the primer. Gladly, there was no "orange peel" effect from the cold.

After removing the masking tape and applying the first clear coat, I applied several decalcomania I had made to the rear panel to label the ports and as a front panel model name. The various decalcomania were made using Adobe Illustrator and printed on special decalcomania paper with an Epson 1200 inkjet printer.

	Decalcomania sheet before application.

Another item that needed to be applied before continuing was the Apple logo badge. It was attached with cyanoacrylate adhesive.

I set all the painted parts aside in a warm, dry room of the basement to cure.

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