[ithacaartist]

Well, the grip panels had a good soak in stripper, and all the offensive old finish is gone. Below is a pic of the results of the soak, plus a clearing of the debris via a bit of hot water and a toothbrush--sweeping with the "grain" of the pattern. All the mayhem at the top of the left grip turns out to be the initials "MW"--very crudely cut. The challenge will be to refresh the existing pattern in conjunction with eliminating the initials. They're kinda deep, so we'll see how it goes. The pattern is 18 lpi, so I need to change over all my 20 lpi cutters to a set for this spacing. The three light colored lines are some I tentatively cleaned a little--couldn't resist seeing what relative color tones would appear.