After posting yesterday's update, I kept going and spent several hours with my precision hand file set cleaning up the rough cuts of the center piece. About 2 hours and a very sore thumb later, I put it down and decided to shift gears for a bit.

I took a flathead screwdriver and carefully pulled the clear green thingy off the front of the case. I was pretty proud that I didn't break a single connecting stand that pushes through the plastic.

Here's a shot of them pulled apart.

I took my Army jacket I dug out of storage the day before, and my wife ironed and cut out the back.

I went digging around for my hot glue gun, and found it, but not the gluesticks. So I got out some packing tape, and positioned the piece of cloth around that green thing to where there was a good variation of the camo colors (the back of the jacket didn't have much green on it, mostly black and brown), and taped them down and cut holes for those plastic standoffs to pop through.

Here's what it looked like when I was done wrapping it. I know it isn't completely tight near the bottom curve, but I'll be sure to fix that when I hot-glue it after I find the darn glue sticks.

And to see how it would look on the case front, I pushed it halfway on. I'm sure it will look much better when the front is black.

I also had another idea while putting this together. I've asked my wife to get my mother-in-law to find one one of my wife's stepdad's old Marine Corps name tapes to put approximately where the floppy hole used to be. If she can't get one, I might take a trip down to the alterations place by the local Post Exchange and get one made if it won't take too long.

Its going to be pretty tough to do more cutting and painting now that its the work-week again. Its usually already dark by the time I get home, so working outside is probably out of the question. I did pick up some large cardboard boxes from a local wendy's restaurant to use for backing when I do my spraypainting though. Maybe big enough to set up, and put the piece inside to protect it from wind and flying debris that will screw up a paintjob in no time.