I continued building-up my Colnago today by setting up the brakes and rear derailleur (partially).

• First, I "fished" the new rear-brake housing through the top tube. I accomplished this easily by feeding a brand-new (long) rear derailleur cable first through the new housing, and then through the piece of old housing the previous owner thoughtfully left for me. I then pulled the old housing out, keeping tension on the cable to pull the new housing through. Easy.
• Next, I fed the rear cable through. I came to learn that I probably should have just cut the housing to fit before feeding the cable in. As it was, I had to "un-feed" the cable to cut down the housing, which was a little fiddly, but no big deal.
• Finally, I set up the rear-brake. This turned out to be a little bit of a pain because there is quite a bit of play in the brake assembly, so it was hard to get it, and keep it, centered. I also discovered that the rear wheel had a pretty bad blip in it, so I had to true it. Having the brakes off center actually helped with the truing :-).
• Moving on, I set up the front brake, which went quickly and easily, except that my housing cuts kept leaving nasty burrs in the spiral lining. I had to cut a number of times before getting a relatively clean cut that I could then clean up.
• Next up was the rear derailleur cable. I had hoped to use the cool little Dura-Ace gear-position doodad that sits in line with the shift housing. However, I didn't have a long-enough piece of the fancy narrow shift cable housing that would fit in the end of the doodad. So, I left the doodad off and used regular housing, cut to size. Having fed the cable down through the bottom bracket and through the bottom-mounted chainstay braze-on, I was met with a minor challenge. As we all know, a piece of housing must loop up from this braze-on to its place on the derailleur. However, the braze-on's hole was a little too small for the thicker housing I'm using. I got past this by using some of the fancy narrow shift cable housing, which did fit into the braze-on's hole. The housing is now looped appropriately, but I haven't snugged down the cable yet. That's the next step, when I continue my build-up.