Sanding Sanding Sanding

OK.  Here's the deal.  Finishing work is boring and there is little to photograph as far as progress goes.  So in order to satisfy those of you that demand periodic, meaningful updates, I will post progress photos and throw in some kind of tidbit information to keep your interest.  Lets give it a try.

  
Click on this photo and you will see a bump in the body line.  This was no doubt caused by all the fitting and sanding that was done when we restored the wheel wells.

Here is a little better look at it.  The bump is the original body line.  The area on both sides of the bump need to be built up.

After adding fiberglass followed by a little Bondo, the body line is looking much better.  Another couple hours were spent on this area after this picture was taken and the results are more than acceptable.

The same issue is on the passenger side but not quite so bad.

We are sanding the primer and the fiberglass until the surface is ready for the next coat of primer.  Since we are block sanding, the primer left on the fender is actually filling low spots.

The top of the right front fender is ready for primer.  It required very little sanding.

The right rear however required lots of sanding.  Yep, the same goes here.  The green that's left behind is filling low spots.  These low spots are only a few thousandths thick so it's not a big deal.

We keep finding that occasional area that needs to be repaired with fiberglass.  This one has since been dressed up and is ready for primer.

Corvettes are notorious for developing stress cracks.  The door handle area is especially prone because the handles are bolted down tight from the back side.  To help prevent new stress cracks we decided to actually mold the handles to the door panels.  The handles were wrapped in cellophane then held against the body with a wet layer of fiberglass sandwiched in between.  It worked great.

OK.  Here's that tidbit of information I talked about.  My brother Jim is moving to China and he didn't want to leave his Nomad in storage for several years.  He asked if I'd be interested and my wife told me I would.  I owned this car many years ago so it comes with a ton of sentimental value.  So we now have two Nomads and the garage is stuffed.  That's a good problem though.

Here's a picture of Gerri and I taken next to the Nomad about 25 years ago.  When the Corvette is finished this will be our next project.  Should be lots of fun.

As always, thanks for watching.