Hi all ! Thanks for the warm welcome . You guys were right , the manual is awesome and the build is going well . I am about 3/4 way through the build and everything is going pretty well except..... The wood base. I sanded it , tried to stain it with a light oak stain and it came out horrible . So I sanded both of them down to bare wood using 60 , 120 and finally 220 grit sand paper . Then I used some clear polyurethane . These things came out nice , very happy with the second attempt . Thanks again to the crew at Bottlehead for neat stuff . Cheers !