I painted the hood pieces, and a day later I masked off and painted the black strip on each side. Then I installed the rubber bumpers and leather corner protector on each side. Finally I assembled all the pieces with stainless steel hinge rods, and put the hood on the car. There was a suspenseful moment when I realized that the hinge on one side was bent out of alignment. I had never noticed before, since the individual pieces each looked fine, and the problem was only visible when they were mated up to each other. Fortunately I was able to bend everything back to the correct shape without affecting the nice new paint. The hood lines up really nicely with the body and radiator shell, which tells me that the frame is straight and square. I won’t have to spend too much time messing with shimming the body to get everything lined up.
The next step is to put away all the painting stuff and tidy up the garage a bit. Then I will re-paint and install the hood latches and finish working on the running boards. The rubber matting and trim strips need to be installed on them. After that I can get the body permanently bolted to the frame.