Can a replacement Truss Rod Cover be ordered or not?

[teb]

The plastic I use for my pickguards and other stuff is 1/8" clear acrylic sheet (like Plexiglas, though these days it comes under different names). I get it from glass and mirror shops. You could cut it with a coping saw, but a band saw or jig saw with a blade made for plastics works a lot better. You cut the piece slightly oversized and then work it down to your lines with sandpaper by hand, or with a spindle sander. The thing you have to understand about working with plexi is that in doing so, you are creating internal stress in the piece. If you don't eventually relieve the stress from machining it, you may have it crack or craze on you later, especially from the solvents in the paint used on the back side of a piece to color it (which looks a lot richer than just using colored acrylic sheets).

I do all my cutting, shaping, edge sanding and polishing and hole drilling ahead of time. Then I stick the pieces on a cookie sheet or pizza stone and pop them in the oven at 180 degrees F for a couple hours to anneal them and relieve the stress. Leave the door shut and let them cool slowly back to room temperature in the oven. By the way, an awful lot of regular drill bits will crack the plexi as they come through its far side. It's better for home craftsmen to abrade the needed screw holes with a pointed Dremel file bit, grinding them carefully until they are the proper size for your screws. Once the piece is cut, machined, annealed and cooled it's ready for paint on the back side. I just use a good grade of regular spray paint and have never had a problem.

I polish the edges of my pickguards (and even my factory plexi TRCs) by hand wet sanding and finishing with polishing compound on a rag (I don't own a buffer). They look a lot better than the edges on the stock parts. If you radius the edges of your guards, they do some cool glow-things refracting light. It's also possible to sand them square and clean and then paint the edges, like I did on my 2030 bass. These steps aren't very difficult, but they do take enough time that you can see why they can't do them in a production setting. If you have the time though, they will dress up your guitar a bit.