My bass is finally done

Looking fantastic and a very professional finish.

Thanks so much guys!

Phil, I used Krylon Colormaxx spray paint. It says you should hold the can 6" - 8" from the surface when spraying, but I always got drips that way. I'd be spraying back and forth and in the areas that were directly in front of the spray nozzle, I'd get a nice smooth finish, but to either side I got overspay; kind of like tiny particles of paint just sitting on top of the surface. When dry it felt like fine sandpaper. Seeing as I sprayed back-and-forth, I had stripes of shiny and smooth, with stripes of overspray in between.

Anyhow, not being a fan of drips, I held the can 12" from the surface, so the whole thing was that "overspray" texture. So I sanded with 1,000, then 2,000 and 3,000 grit sandpaper, then went over it with medium and then fine polishing compound. This left a very even and smooth finish, but 2 problems: 1) I would ALWAYS end up sanding through the paint in some areas and 2) the scratches from the 1,000 grit paper were still present, despite trying to remove them with the finer grits.  You could only see that if you held it up so the light reflected off it just right (otherwise it looked fantastic lol).  

So I ended up painting it again and only using 3,000 grit paper, followed by the polishing compounds.  This gave me a nice smooth finish to the touch, but because I didn't fully remove that "overspray" stuff - just smoothed it out - if you hold it up to the light it appears to have a fine metal flake sort of thing going on.  I figured that was acceptable for my purposes

I don't know man, I'm the world's worst painter - perhaps you'd have better results.  For furniture you're probably not going for the same finish you'd want on a guitar.  Maybe just put on a few coats (you only have to wait a minute or two between coats) and then sand lightly with 320 grit or something.  That might turn out nice...unless I tried to do it in which case it would be an awful mess