Making dust

Last Friday the crew and I spent the entire day sanding the El Camino before pushing it into the booth for priming. We enjoyed the experience so much that we decided to do it again today.

The first picture is of Chris blocking away on the roof. Blocking is a technique to remove imperfections by wrapping a piece of sandpaper around a semi-flexible plastic block. The block allows the sandpaper to quickly remove material, primer in this case, from high areas until the surface is smooth and level. It is a dusty, tiring job, but it is the only way to get the perfectly smooth surface that the High Performance Finish requires.

If you read last week’s post about this car you may recall that I noticed a problem in the belt line on the car. Pictures two and three are of me working to correct that issue. Picture two is of me applying additional body filler and picture three is of me sanding it off, reshaping the body. It looks easy in these photos, but I did that apply and remove process four times until I got the line positioned on the car like I wanted it.

In picture four you can see Chris using the DA (Dual Action) sander on the less critical parts of the car. The areas that are not going to come under such close scrutiny and don’t have to have the mirror like High Performance Finish, like the cowl area, we finish with power tools to speed the process.

Picture five is Chris, once again, sanding, but this time in all the corners and crevices that the block can’t reach. Sanding in these areas requires strong fingers and soft hands … strong fingers to stand up to all the abuse from sanding … soft hands so as not put any ripples or other imperfections in the car from sanding without a block. But Chris can handle it because he is a sanding machine!

Picture six shows what happens after a lot of sanding occurs … you get a lot of sanding dust. The dust you see in this picture is the primer we sanded off today. This is the second time today the car has been blown clean with high pressure air … so you can imagine the amount of sanding dust we made today. In case you are wondering … it was a lot. So much we had to clean out the shop afterwards to get all the dust out.

The seventh and last photo shows the car after we finished blocking. We need to do a little bit of touch up sanding here and there, but the car is basically ready to paint in this photo.

I’m glad to finally see the car at this stage … and I suspect the owner is as well.

It’s a tough job …

Yesterday we finished painting the convertible top lid so today, after the paint had a chance to thoroughly dry, we sent the car to Auto Trim Design to have the paint protecting plastic put on the car. The plastic covers the lid to protect the paint from abrasion when the top is in the up position. There are no pictures of it because it is completely clear and very nearly invisible.

The first photo is of the car after the it has been cleaned up … the second photo is of me leaving to return the car to the owner.

Driving a 370Z convertible on a nice late summer day … it’s a tough job but someone has to do it … and I have never asked my people to do a job I wasn’t willing to do myself.

Consoling the owner

Several weeks ago the owner of the blood red 1965 Chevelle we painted dropped this console of to be modified and painted. We have been working on it, off and on, since. Today we finally got around to priming it.

The first two photos show me applying the etching epoxy primer. This is sprayed on bare metal so all the subsequent layers will adhere.

The next two photos, numbers three and four, are after the application of the high solids primer. This primer is used to fill any imperfections in the surface. We will block sand most of this material off to smooth and refine the surface.

Blocking is a technique where sandpaper is attached to a semi-ridged plastic block so that the sandpaper cuts hard into high spots while gliding lightly over low spots. This removes material from the high areas until the surface is dead smooth and even. This is the same material and technique we use to produce our High Performance Finish, but we won’t finish the console to the same high luster finish.

JMC AutoworX is primarily a paint and body shop … but doing some interior work is a nice change of pace.