Pulled double duty today.
Spent the majority of the day working on Mike’s ‘57 Chevy, after a long hiatus, today finally we resumed getting the underside of his trunk lid ready for paint.
Normally I’d be done for by the end of a day like that, but after a bite to eat and a quick cat nap, I was feeling motivated to get a bit more done on my own junk.
I got the rest of the upper/inner rocker stripped up to the front seam...
...then spent the rest of the time practicing and honing a new technique, metal finishing.
Ok, it’s not exactly “new”, but it’s something I’ve never really concerned myself much with in the past. It’s the process of smoothing out the metal in consecutively finer and finer grits until it’s a perfect finish that requires no filler. Of course, this is only able to be done if the area is already flat and straight.
I believe you never stop learning, and if you do, you might as well roll over and die because there’s so much to know out there. So with that being said, I decided to try and give the process an honest effort just to see what I could accomplish. The area in question is the bottom corner of the passenger’s side door jamb where the rust was so awful. I had successfully ground out all the rust right down to the deepest pits, but I had used an aggressive 36 grit disc to do so.
My initial plan was to lightly skim the area with some putty to smooth out all the grinder marks, but that would’ve required hours of painstaking hand and finger sanding, not fun by any stretch. So instead, I figured this would be the perfect place to try my hand at metal finishing. After a bit of experimentation, I came up with the perfect combination of progressive grits:
Initial grinder marks were 36, but I found if I spent some time smoothing those out with a 60 grit disc, I could eventually get them to disappear. Then 80 grit on the DA to remove the 60 grit scratches. Still time consuming, but very rewarding once done. The ultimate reward though is to not have to use any more filler.
I’m still working on it, so it’s not completely done yet, but it’s already a far cry from the heavy grinder marks I had there before.
Before:
After:
I know it’s tough to see much of a difference in the pictures, but in person it’s a remarkable improvement. And yes, I know it’s probably anal retentive and just a door jamb, but I look at it as an area to experiment on and develop a new technique.
Never too old to try something different, and maybe even learn a new skill!
😉
D.
