Noobies VÜ

It's been ages since I've last posted on here. Actually I think most of my blog posts start out with: it's been ages, it's been a long time, etc.
My amazing brother passed away a little over 4 months ago and though I'm not quite ready to write about that at this time, (as Legolas says in LOTR, "...for me the pain is all too near.") he is the cause of this post.
After he passed and I spent time in GA for the funeral his gorgeous wife Robin was so kind as to offer me the choice of a couple of his guitars. After conversing with his son Cameren, I chose a beautiful Lake Placid Blue Fender HSS Stratocaster and a kit Les Paul he had been fiddling with. He had the LP body prepped for paint and all the parts but he hadn't painted it or assembled it.
Robin showed me a video online of how he had wanted to paint it. It was a nifty technique called "dipping" where you actually float the paint on the surface of the water and swirl it together. Man, it looks really easy on the video. But there are things they don't tell you which I will share later. Anyhoo, so I knew the technique and I also had the paints (red, white, and blue) that he had picked up for just this project.

 

This video makes it all seem so easy but there are some things they don't go into, ambient temperature outside, that the guitar is actually quite buoyant, and the paint will skim up very quickly; I assume this is more a result of the outside temp than anything else.
I tried to do it earlier in the morning before it heated up much, but I think it was still a bit warm.
A few things conspired to make this a fail in the making.
I had to get some Borax and it turns out it had likely been on the shelf for ages at is was completely solid in the box, it was like a 4 pound powdery brick. So I had to break it up a bit, no biggie.
I did the shaky thing with the paints Chris bought, but I clearly should have opened them all up and really looked at them. I didn't realize until I started mixing that the paints were very old and had partially solidified. The red and blue seemed fine but the white was useless. :(
I of course didn't realize that until after I put in the red and blue. This is when I also learned that the paint was skimming and drying on the surface. I had read of this issue with Testors paints but these were Humbrols which all the forums said were best for this and didn't skim up as much. Again, I blame the temperature.
I still gave it a shot though, perhaps in retrospect I shouldn't have. :( as soon as I saw the paint starting to dry on the surface I should have passed it. But I didn't. I gave it a shot anyway.
This is when I learned how the guitar is very buoyant, you actually have to force it down. In watching the above video I never thought for a moment that they were putting effort into it.
So after I got it dunked and cleared the surface I pulled it out and I think this is where the biggest problem with swirl dipping lies, the paint is not even. The paint will pool and congeal in areas and it makes for an uneven and tragic coat.
So I tried, it looks wretched and I will have a job ahead of me re-sanding and priming the body for paint. I don't feel terrible about it, it is a kit guitar and I know it had been sitting for awhile. I also like to think Chris would have been as gung-ho to try. lol He likely would have been much more successful but...
So here are the before and after (for now) photos of my debacle. lol