Day 168

Some more progress today.

First, I sourced a replacement visor for the one that was broken during "restoration".  It should be here Monday and I'll get it sent out to get restored, properly.  I also sourced a couple horn buttons which are in nice shape to replace mine which has a bunch of cracks and crazing.

Today, I started block sanding some of the small parts getting them laser smooth for the final paint application.  I started with all the "small" parts for the car.  The rear tail light housings, license light housing, brackets, supports, speedometer cable tube, the dash grills, etc.

About half of them blocked out fine the first try.  I started with 400 grit and then went to 600.  They turned out nice.

The other half were suspect to begin with so I blocked them until I started to see metal showing and stopped!  The idea is to sand down the high spots to meet the low spots.  Well if the low spot is the metal, you can't sand anymore.  The next step is to apply more primer filler to raise the lows and then block it again.  This could go 3 or 4 times.  Because I spent quite a bit of time on body work I'm hoping to only have to prime twice, but I'll see and do what it takes to do a good job.

Here's a sample of what I was doing.  First I sprayed a guide coat which is a contrasting color onto the piece.  Then with the sand paper and a flat block (of rubber-ish material) I sand in an X pattern to get the primer flat.

As you can see below the guide coat slowly gets sanded off as the high spots are brought down to the lows.  More or less you are trying to take the peaks down to the valleys to make a nice plain.  A topography analogy, brilliant!

This glove box door was one of the pieces I could not get flat on the first try.  As you can see, there is filler (blue) showing through which is the same as sanding to metal.  There is also metal showing on the bottom right.  The next step in this process is back into the paint booth to apply more primer filler onto the piece.  This will bring the valleys up higher which allows them to meet the bottom of the peaks when sanded down again.  Make sense?

I'm going to run to the paint store tomorrow.  I need some more primer filler ($$$), guide coat, and some other odds and ends.

I have the fenders, doors, hood, decklid, and full body left to sand...a lot of repetitive motion in my future!