Redo Yamaha CG151S finish (Part 1 of 2)

There are ugly milky patches on the back, sides and neck of my Yamaha CG151S, so I decided to redo the finish, ie remove the polyurethane finish and replace with shellac using French polish. The sound board is not affected so I'm leaving it as it is.

This is a picture of the milky patches on the back. 

Removal method : the polyurethane layer is so thick that a chemical paint stripper has no effect. I had to resort to mechanical means using cabinet scrapers, planes and sand paper.

The scraper is handy on curved surfaces on the neck. The plane is used on the headstock back and sides. The headstock top has a black plastic veneer, so it had to be sanded with sandpaper. Sandpaper is used extensively on the back and sides, starting with 80, then 120 and 400 grit.

The polyurethane layer is very thick. It took a lot of sanding and elbow grease to remove it. Generated a lot of nasty sanded powder. The amount shown is from the patch on the guitar lower bout in the photos below, so you can have an idea of how thick the layer is. The guitar is suffocated; I have thoughts of stripping the top as well to free it up, but will leave this for later.

Halfway through the FP, the finish already looks good, better than the original polyurethane finish. The ovangkol back and side patterns really stand out well. 

I'll update when the FP is completed.

Here it is completed. Definitely better finish.