Primed cab

Here are the finished pictures from yesterdays post on priming the cab. Once this sets up for a few days, we will start blocking it out to ensure super smooth and flat panels then a final prime. Then we will be ready for paint.

’52 Cabbie

For the past few days, we have been working on the cab to the ’52 Ford. We have the body work pretty well wrapped up. Here you can see we slid it into the booth for primer. We masked off the dash, we will use a different primer on that area later this week. Once this primer is set up and dried, we will block it out and re-prime the whole cab with our finishing primer. Once that happens, the next step is more RED paint.

’52 Ford truck cab, still moving along

 We have been having some computer issues over the past week, so I haven’t been posting our work as often as normal. We did work on the the ’52 cab some last week and today as well. The body work is moving along nicely. The outside is pretty close, maybe another day or so, and then a few hours on the dash, and this one is ready for more primer. Here you can see Chris working the firewall. Paul and I worked the back of the cab while Rick worked the left fender mounting panel. A good amount accomplished today.

Buff and polish

Here you can see what a few hours of wet sanding and buffing can do. We started out by sanding the doors of the ’52 with 1000 grit sand paper. Once we were happy with the smoothness of the clear with that, we switched to 2000 grit sand paper, then finally 3000. The 3000 grit paper makes the buffing stages go quite a bit quicker.  Once we were finished with the sanding Paul took over the buffing stages from here on out. He started with a heavy cutting compound, the switched to a light cut before finally going over it with a polishing compound. As you can see, they came out nice and slick.

Down, but not out

 This F250 came in last week after a run in with a deer. After a few new parts up front and little repair on the fender this truck is ready for the road again.

Back on it

 We  worked on the ’52 Ford truck last Friday and today. We have the doors and hood all ready for paint now. Today we blocked out the top side of the hood and prepped the bottom side for paint as well. Tomorrow we will do the same to the doors and hopefully get a little RED sprayed on them as well. Our plan is to get the doors and hood trimmed out so we can paint the top sides of them on Wednesday.

Good progress today

The 1952 Ford is coming together right nicely. This morning we blocked out the fenders, header panel and inner fenders. Since it was a little warmer today we opted to go ahead and prep them and get them painted today. Warmer temperatures makes the paint dry a little better so since we had several parts ready, we took advantage of it. The first few pictures were taken after the sealer was applied. Sealer is used to provide a uniform layer to help with the coverage of the color coats. 4 coats of color were followed by 3 coats of clear. As you can see they turned out very slick. We will give these a few weeks to fully dry then we will wet sand and buff these just like we did the rear ones.

Final prime

Yesterday and today we blocked out the front fenders for the ’52 Ford. They turned out pretty good but we did have to go back and apply a little more filler in the right one. No big deal, thats really why we do it this way. Its better to see that now, than after they have been painted. Today we applied the final coats of primer to these fenders. Next week these will be ready to see red.

Block party

My arms are yelling enough, enough already!! Blocking on these fenders takes a toll on your muscles. These fenders were sprayed with slick sand yesterday and today were blocked out and body work started. The darker spot on the fenders before any filler was applied shows the low spots. These low spots will require body filler to straighten out the panel. We blocked these fenders with 80 grit sandpaper to highlight these bad areas. Once they were completely blocked, we started applying filler. Chris took one and I took the other. This is a not so fun part of our job but a very important one. If this step isn’t done correctly the panels will look wavy and ripply, not what you want in a show car finish. Chris and I spent most of today spreading body filler then block sanding it off. We kept telling ourselves that we were having fun, but neither of us really believed it. We did get quite a bit done though and only a few more hours will be required before these are ready for primer again. All in a days work. Come on back and see what we are up to.

Ruba dub dub

These are the fenders for the ’52 Ford.  We wet sanded and buffed them today. We started with 1000 grit sandpaper and a block.  The block and 1000 grit paper is used to  flatten out the clear coat and remove what little orange peel. Once we finished up with the 1000 by block, we went over it once more with 1000 by hand. We then switched to 2000. Lastly we went over the panel with 3000 grit on a dual action sander.  Once all that was completed we started buffing with a heavy cut compound and wool pad. This process removes all of the scratches from the sanding process but leaves the panel kinda dull. We then switched to a polishing compound. This brings the shine back up. We then go over it one last time to bring out the ultimate shine. Finally we hand polished it to the immaculate shine you see here. These steps were done to both rear fenders today.  Not to shabby for a days work.