I took the guitar body to work, and put it in our server room, which is climate controlled, and much cooler and lower humidity than my garage. I set the guitar on a back pack. The finish was so soft, it left marks from the fabric. You could leave a nice divot if you pressed your fingernail into the finish. So I had to hang it from a rack. And I waited 45 days for the clear coat to cure. I will use Minwax next time (supposed to dry faster) and use less color coat. Two cans was excessive and likely led to the increased drying time.
While I waited for the drying, I made a new nut, and leveled the frets. I also wax-potted the P90s. 50% Bees Wax and 50% paraffin. Put it all in a cake pan on a low temperature hotplate (one the kids use to do melted crayon drawings). Took about 30 mins to melt all this wax.
I also wanted to waxpot a pair of old Harmony pickups that were so microphonic you could sing into them. So I lengthened the leads, and dropped everybody into the hot wax. Let them sit in there for about 10 minutes.
Wax potting makes a big mess on the PUPs and pup covers. I have a heat gun, so I turned it up to 700 degrees and gave the PUPs a quick blast, then wipe with a paper towel. After a few iterations, the PUPs cleaned up like new..except now they were waxpotted.
So I finally got to the sanding part of the body. I started with 500, and progressed to 800, 1000, 1500, then to 2000. I should have spent more time with the 500, but to my surprise, the wavy bits from the BINS blast do not show! I used a dead battery from my Snark Tuner to do some of the sanding, because I read about finger furrows. But this was a pain in the ***. I just ended up sanding it by hand. I finished it off with some 3M swirl remover. It feels pretty darn smooth, reflects a little light, and although not perfect, it's good enough for me. If you look closely at the pivot pegs, you'll notice they are different. I lost one of them in the garage...so I went to a local shop, and in his parts bin had some odd bolts that are used somewhere on drum kits, but the threads fit. So I hacksawed it off and filed it a bit to give it a taper. I deck all my trems, so I'm not too worried about it returning to pitch.
I set the action somewhere between a nickel and a dime (closer to a dime!)at the 12th fret. No fretting out and not much rattle at all with a set of Ernie Ball 9's on there. Big thanks to Ron Kirn for the fret leveling tutorial. I'm pretty happy with the result, and I won't fear the rattle can again. I think I can get very good results with more practice.
Here's a parting shot of my 2 favorites, this Jazzmaster and my '94 Mim Squier Series Tele.