Its a block party

This week we started blocking out the doors on the FJ. While working on one of the doors we found a previous rust repair that was in need of attention so we are in the process of getting that fixed up. In the mean time, Paul and Cole dedicated some time to getting the body a little closer to priming. We pulled the old seam sealer out of the drip rails where it had gotten bad over the years and was letting water seep down to the metal. We will treat all those areas and apply new seam sealer before priming. Its doesnt really improve the looks of the job, but it will hopefully extend the life of the drip rails. Thats what Cole is doing in the picture with drill. A wire brush on a drill works really well at that when good old fashioned elbow grease is used. So, finding these things did set us back from priming today but hopefully next week will go smoother.

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.