Had some nice weather this weekend which means it was time to do some painting! First I finished drilling the last few holes I had to take care, my loom clamp and charging plate. While wanting to maintain screen accuracy I did not mount my loom clamp in the mouse hole, rather I pushed back a little bit. This kept me from having to deal with the main issue most people run into, overlapping the L bracket. This is one I picked up from Bishop a few years ago and it's awesome, works perfectly for anchoring the loom and looks professional. I also had played with my countersink on the inside for the speaker holes, but in the end I opted not to do all of them. Because my first attempt had a few holes that ran up on each other I feared if I ran the countersink on them that they'd start to look like one big hole and ruin the effect. I opted to sand it down and smooth it out as best I could, though admittedly I'm a little bummed I couldn't have that little extra detail.
Next was my charging plate, and here I hit my first major mess up on the pack (or atleast what I'd consider a mess up). I initially did my measurements and markings on the outside of the mobo, then flipped it over and copied the measurements to the inside. Because my L brackets and power cell bracket are already mounted it's easier to drill from the inside for a flat surface. Well in my haste I didn't invert my measurements for the mounting holes. This resulted in my plate being slightly off centered which wasn't going to do. I then flipped the mobo back over and found away to get it flat to drill from the outside. Some how my second hole ended up being about 1/8" off, I have no idea how it happened or what I did but I was INSANELY frustrated at this point. I decided to fill the holes and put the mobo away for a few days and hit it again fresh. I made a template of the bottom of the plate like I did with my other aluminum parts and wouldn't you know it, perfect on the first try. Should have done that from the get go, doh!
After that I got to work on masking off the inside of the mobo, I've seen them done where just the outline is black or the whole inside is painted black. I liked the two tone appearance so I started outlining the edges. I didn't really worry to much about spacing as I was taping since this will be covered almost all the time, but I did go a little wider on the left side as there is slightly more overhang on that side. You can also see my charging plate mess up and fill, at least from the outside you'll never see it once the plate is riveted.
Here is the end result, I'll let it dry for a few days before messing with it again. And of course as soon as I finished painting I realized I missed drilling the hole for the wiring to run in from the charging plate. At least that's a quick fix, but I left the tape over the speaker grilles just to keep any excess paint getting through when I drill and touch up.
Finally since I had the paint out I figured I'd take care of my neck foam roll, hit the ends in black and then taped it on. Wish I could have kept the centers a little more white, I may try to go back and fix that. I tried to mimic the foam on the Venkman pack with big white square where the straps are, while also keeping the foam up off the frame like we see on almost all the packs.