It is starting to look really good. I will post up some photos when I get it done.
I've sped up my workflow slightly. I hit the black finish on the back of the bass with a heat gun, until I see the black start to bubble. I then get a safety razor blade under the finish, and scrape it off in sections. This leaves a brown, caramelized-looking finish under the black. The brown quickly sands off, revealing the wood below the sanding sealer. This sanding sealer can then be buffed up. I'm not going for a plastic shine on the back and sides, just a sort of satin glow that lets the wood pop without looking too synthetic. Scraping inside the cutaways has been a pain as the finish seems thicker in them, and it is a tight area to work in without damaging the finish I want to preserve on the top of the bass or sides of the neck. Lots of taping and re-taping.
I've had to drop-fill a few spots where that damage was, that I posted earlier on. In doing so, and leveling it out, the sanding sealer is getting perilously thin and I'm worried I will end up back down at the wood. I might wipe some lacquer onto this section or go for a wider superglue fill.
The only other issue is where and how do I stop scraping?! I've scored the finish at the end of each cutaway, where the binding ends as it meets the neck. It makes sense to stop the natural finish on the sides of the bass at the same point the binding finishes. While I've scored the finish to give me a line to work up to, I'm not yet entirely sure about how to 1) remove the black right up to this line and 2) alleviate the subtle stair-step transition from scraped natural finish back to the factory black finish. I'm wondering
Lastly, in scraping the treble-side cutaway I've discovered that Peerless used a darker wood inside the cutaway, starting just shy of the point of the cutaway. On the original Gibsons this area was built up from what appears to be binding material, but Peerless/Epiphone simply used a walnut-coloured wood that is presumably more flexible.