OK so part one of the experiment has worked. Firstly, the plates fit the chassis to the nearest millimetre. WIN!
First we tried (I use the word 'we' here more in a sense of Nicola tried, and I watched) to carefully paint inside the engravings. This works but we quickly realised that the plexiglass is so smooth (more on this later) that the paint doesn't easily stick to it. So the easiest way to colour in the engraved parts is to generously apply the paint and then wipe away the excess before it dries, which is quite quickly. Either way, that part worked out very nicely. Here is what we have at the moment:
Only one of the back plates have been painted for now. We'll continue that process tomorrow.
Now, the next part, of course, is getting the gold background colour onto the plexiglass. Side note, I'm using the old term 'plexiglass' here because I learned today there are guitarists who don't know why Marshall plexis are called by that name. It is because their faceplates were made from perspex a.k.a. plexiglass. Technically, Marshalls made after late 1969, that has metal faceplates, are not 'plexis' although they do have more or less the same circuit and people call those 'plexis' too.
OK, so, the gold background colour. I have an actual Marshall Plexi (of a sort) that was made by Marshall in 1968 (I believe). Here's a photo:
As you can well see, this amp is sporting a plexiglass faceplate with a most satisfyingly golden hue. So of course, these new faceplates I'm (We're) making should try to attain a similar level of gilded perfection. I bought shiny gold paint. It could probably be mixed a bit with another colour to get close to the correct shade but we ran into a problem when we tried it. The plexiglass is smooth. Very. This happens:
I had some offcuts in my room on which we started experimenting with the gold background. Because the perspex is smooth, the paint goes on in a blobby fashion. You can see the markings to the left of the left blob where I scuffed the perspex with steelwool, to try and matte it a bit. There's a blob there too now, that wasn't enough. That one also behaved the same. Obviously that level of mattiness is not sufficient. More experimentation will follow. This is how far this process has come for today. If you know how to do this, please tell me ?
EDIT: Of course now I realised I have a problem I did a quick google. Apparently it must be roughed up a bit (yay) and needs a primer. <Plans another visit to a shop/>
