I agree that with her stripped down she looks pretty sad. I also can't wait to see her in her new glory.

I have always wanted to do this but have never found a fw that was in bad shape paint wise for this. Ok I did find two but that was before they started to re-paint them. Those two I gave away to friends.

Ebay has replacement decals! They are nice. Sand, paint, sand, paint. I like to lacquer, then apply shellac as final step. It should come out pristine!

I would suggest going down to wet/dry sand paper 600, 1500, 2000, then 5000, then wax.

I have finished the 2nd coat of paint. Going to wait till tomorrow night to put on the decals. I bought some on ebay, just not sure how to put them on. I also have 2000 grit sandpaper. So after the decals go on, should I lightly wet/sand with 2000 grit and very lightly go over the decals? Then wait 24 hours to apply the 1st coat of clearcoat, lightly sand and then apply clearcoat, sand and clearcoat once more?

After 2nd coat of paint.....decals come next
 

These pics are after a 3rd coat of paint...because we had a couple of places where the paint didn't look good so we used a couple dabs of black automotive touch up paint and then sanded with 2000 grit, the a light 3rd coat. Waiting till tomorrow night to apply the decals. Can you see the little 'suspension' system we made to hang the light cover, wheel and the bobbin refill clip? Yes...it's a little bit redneck....but it worked!!;)

more more ,pictures please,, I would'nt sand the decal's DottieBug

What kind of stripper did you use? I'm starting one soon.

It's looking very nice...I may have to try a 99 that is in rough shape first:) and wait for a featherweight to come along...really nice!

We bought the stripper at O'Reilley Auto Parts...It's airplane stripper. Strong stuff...wear thick gloves! Burns like heck if you get it on your skin.

Major setback -- decals are running.........
 

:(So I waited two days to let the paint get good and dry. Applied the decals and did a light, very light, wet sanding of the machine using 2000 grit. Then applied a very light coat of clearcoat. I used self-sticking decals and not waterslide. Not sure that makes a difference but unfortunately three of the decals ran really bad....

I don't know what to do at this point except to request replacement decals from the ebay store I bought them from. Carefully, remove the decals that ran, resand and hopefully not have to repaint...reapply the new decals and hope they don't run.

This machine is going to my grandson so I don't think he'll even notice but it's just that I want to do this renovation right. Hopefully, this will end well for this little machine. More to come.

I'm in the process of repainting several featherweights. I used the waterslide decals and didn't have any problems. I would sand the decals off and replace them with the waterslide decals. Sorry this happened to you. I guess after we do a few, we'll get better at it. My problem now is getting my clear coat on without getting "overspray" that I have to keep sanding off. Let us know what you decide to do.