Ok, I cleaned up all of the leaks in the white 'binding' with an x-acto knife. Just put down a piece of masking tape to use as a guide and lightly scored/scraped the paint off with the x-acto blade. It all cleaned up quite nicely, but I CANNOT recommend the use of 3M Blue painter's tape for this application. It may be fine for water-based paints, like latex, but doesn't hold up to solvent-based paint. With the white, I thought I might have been a little too heavy-handed, but I taped and sprayed black on the front of the headstock today and I went pretty light. It covered pretty quickly, so I didn't have to spray a whole lot, but the results were still less than what I'd call clean:
All kinds of creep... All the way around.
The right side of the headstock actually wasn't that bad, but it still needed a
little cleaning up. According to my perfectionist nature).
I don't think the pics show it as bad as it truly looked, but I didn't panic. I was glad that I decided not to wait a day or two before removing the tape. I just waited until it was dry to the touch because, I knew I would have a better chance of cleaning up rough spots before the paint completely cured.
I wasn't sure exactly what to do at this point (did I mention that this is the first time I've attempted painting binding on a headstock??). I originally considered sanding the black paint back with 600 or 800 grit sandpaper, but then I
would have to wait until the paint cured, otherwise sanding it would just smudge the black paint into the white and make a mess. I also wanted to try a less aggressive method first. With sanding, I'd be concerned about taking off too much of the white as well as the black.
The white paint has been drying for a week, so it's fully cured by now and can probably stand up to a mild solvent if I'm careful and go lightly. Acetone would probably be my first choice for something like this, as it's fast evaporating and poses the least risk for the layer of white, but just out of curiosity, I tried rubbing alcohol on a Q-tip first and it worked brilliantly! I could use the Q-tip as a tool to rub the black paint back to a smooth, clean line all around the edges of the headstock.
For a first attempt (heck, for a 21st attempt) I couldn't be happier with the results (Sorry about the photo quality. Photobucket sometimes make pics a little blurry when you
reduce them, for some reason):
The challenge with painting the binding on this headstock came from the fact that the edges of the headstock are
not sharp and square. There's a lot of spots where they rolled over the edge when sanding and the headstock has slightly less than uniform thickness from left to right, so I had to compensate for that.
On the left-hand corner of the headstock, the point had been flattened a little on the front (you can see that the point is a little rough in the photo directly above. You have to catch it at the right angle to even notice it, so it doesn't bother me that much).
There are all kinds of inconsistencies all around the headstock that make it hard to maintain what
looks like a band of uniform thickness all around the perimeter. When you're laying the masking tape down, you have to look at it from all angles to get a sense of what it's going to look like. I had positioned and re-positioned the tape several times, and often, where I positioned the tape seemed counter-intuitive when looking at it from the side, but when you look at it from the front of the headstock, it made perfect sense.
The fact that it looks uniform all the way around is partly an optical illusion... I had to fudge it a bit. This came into play when I was rubbing back the black too.
Anyway, I'm delighted with the way it came out. Whenever I attempt stuff like this for the first time, it's usually a lot of trial and error and starting from scratch again, or attempting a series of heroic 'fixes', which often times make it worse. I like it when everything comes out right the first time and bumps in the road are easily overcome.
Now I'll give the paint a few days of drying time and I'll lay down a base-coat of poly. I seem to be having some communication problems with the guy who does my waterslide decals, so hopefully, I can get that sorted out soon and get my logo on there. Then seal everything with a few more layers of poly.
..... but i did return it !! i'm getting a new one 
