Update: November 12 — It hardly seems worth an additional web page, so I didn’t add yet more pictures of the same old blocking. The focus was on the left door, and I was committed to conquering its waves. The blocking took all of the working weekend, amounting, I would imagine to a good ten-to-twelve hours. I noticed on Bill McKenna’s website that he spent 25 hours on his left door, so I figure that my work is about in line with his. There’s still another coat of primer to go on it, and I don’t know how many hours I spent working on it before this past weekend. As Bill says somewhere on his web site, it’s a wonder that people can actually make money doing a decent restoration. The hours required — and from skilled people, too — are formidable.

Speaking of Bill, I bought a replacement left frame from him. It was good to see his paint job in real life, at least a small portion of it. I’ve not done anything with the frame yet. I figure that can wait until I have the car body primed.

Second Coat of Primer

The car was turned into a pumpkin for Halloween. After the second coat of Tie-Coat Primer was good and dry, I put on another guide coat of flat spray paint. This time I found a half-can of hideous orange. It made the car look like a well ripened pumpkin — appropriate for the season. I took this picture after I happened to see where we were about a year ago. It turns out that we had just applied some POR-15 over the same area of the car after having removed paint. We were still pretty much in a tear-down and clean-up mode back in October-November 2002. It is good to see those old web pages, since it at least gives the impression of progress. Block-sanding tends to throttle that feeling, except of course when you tear into a bright orange marker coat!

It’s probably worth remembering that the point of doing multiple coats of high-build primer isn’t so much to coat the surface evenly with a thick coat. It’s really intended to allow you to even out low areas and obscure high areas, though of these two, I think that high areas are problematic. So in effect, you end up sanding most of the high-build primer off of the car. You leave a reasonable amount of primer on to assure a good bond of the topcoat to the surface. The temptation is to block the car a bit too little, leaving more than is needed to prepare the surface.

I get the feeling that this is really an art. And I also realize that good body work is worth the money people spend for it. It is labor-intensive and experience does count. (Too bad I have so very little experience!)

The second coat pretty clearly tells me that you really can’t spray the final primer coat and expect things to turn out all right. Despite my care while brushing the second primer coat, blocking it was complicated by the fact of the brush strokes. I found myself reblocking sections that had slight ripples from brush strokes, and I believe those areas would have been flat and ready for paint without the brushing. As a matter of fact, I think first coats are fine to brush, but probably not second coats.

For this priming of the car body, I will complete a second coat and second round of blocking the parts of the body that appear “from the curb” — the external sections of the body shell and the bonnet. The internal sections of these parts will get a single brushed primer coat and blocking. This includes the trunk (or boot), the firewall (or front bulkhead), the interior of the car, and the inside of the bonnet. I will probably spray color in the trunk, the interior, and the inside of the bonnet at that point. After all of this is done, I will spray a final coat of Tie-Coat Primer as smoothly as possible over sections of the car that are not already sprayed with color, followed by final blocking of those surfaces.

Of course, I could spray color on everything at once, though I am thinking that I’ll still have to spray color on the bonnet in at least two sessions, since I want to coat the inside of the bonnet thoroughly. This really means that the inside shell without the internal panels will need a separate spray session. The inside panels and the front valance (the lower “mouth” section) can also be painted separately. Once everything is together, another coat of color is in order.

Once again, the bonnet seems the complication.

I avoided doing the doors until I feel confident that I have a few more blocking tricks in my repertoire. I applied a bit more primer to a couple of low areas on the rear wings, and blocked them nicely into shape. Perhaps that tactic might help should I run into some irregularlities on the doors. I think that the doors are challenging because they don’t have the curves of the wings and the rest of the body. They are almost a pure tubular shape, and it seems difficult to get them just right. I also primed the trunk lid.

A couple of closing shots show where the blocking stands at the end of the weekend.

Paint-primer-with-a-brush hypothesis tested

I mentioned at the close of the last entry that I was going to test out whether “high-build” primer could be painted on with a brush and still have it serve its purpose. Well, I didn’t use a typical sprayed “high-build” primer, though I used a “sandable/buildable primer.” The coating is “Tie-Coat Primer” that I needed to use to bond coatings to POR-15. POR-15 is very tough, and it has properties that make it tough to get regular primers to bond to it. Basically, you have to sand the surface rough in order to get primers or paints to stick to it. Or, you use Tie-Coat Primer.

I applied the Tie-Coat to the bonnet nose, which needed some smoothing in any case. I put on two coats, and after they had set I sprayed a thin coat of regular old flat black paint. The black paint was the “guide” coat that would mark where I had sanded and would highlight low areas on the surface. if the test worked the sanding after this initial primer would leave a perfectly smooth surface, leaving slightly rough and darker patches where low areas would be. High areas would become the color of the underlying POR-15, since the primer would be entirely removed with sanding. Only block sanding is allowed at this point. Taking some wet sandpaper in hand and trying it out with your fingertips just leaves grooves and usually frustrates the purpose of the marker paint coat, since your fingertips just follow the surface, however rough, and take off the paint.

The picture of the bonnet nose shows the light black marker paint over the buildable primer and the block-sanded surface. The bonnet, you might recall, has been a real challenge, and the marks show it. These marks are mostly well defined notches where body filler wasn’t adequately applied. Most low areas end up looking like shadows where wider, less detectable, depressions lurk.

I’m happy to report that the paint-primer-with-a-brush hypothesis tested out just fine. However, I do think there is a bit more waste of primer, and perhaps coats need to be applied a bit more thickly. This is because you have to sand through the brush marks, which appear quite clearly after the first swipes of the block over the surface. There also may be a bit of a tendency to remove too much primer in certain areas in order to remove brush marks. My suggestion is to remember to use reasonably long swipes of the block and avoid concentrating effort in any area. If you are using anything shorter than a 20-30 centimeter (about a foot) stroke with the block, you are probably going too hard at an area. If you use a small block to get at tighter areas or corners, be extra careful.

Because of the brush marks, I’m a little suspicious about applying final primer coats with a brush. It might be counter-productive, though I am going to see whether it’s possible by watching this project. I do think that brushing at least an initial coat makes good sense, and it probably can allow people to avoid a mess with sprayers.

A footnote: I was originally thinking that I would use Tie-Coat to prepare the surface to accept another high-build primer, but I learned from the POR-15 people that they don’t recommend mixing primers like that. They told me in response to an email question that Tie-Coat is a buildable primer and using another primer over it might have unexpected results. They responded quickly, too, I’m happy to report. I don’t know about the response, though, since it might have been designed to drum up more sales of Tie-Coat Primer. I’m not taking any chances, however. I’ll be using Tie-Coat as the one-and-only primer for this project.

Initial brush priming the body shell

After the bonnet experiment tested well, I went ahead and brush primed the body shell first with a thin coat of Tie-Coat Primer and then after it had set overnight a thicker coat — at least a coat that ended up with some drips here and there. After that coat set, I sprayed a dusting of the flat black paint as a marker coating. I made sure that the primer itself had set before I did any block-sanding. (Tie-Coat is supposed to accept topcoats after no less than 24 hours after application.) Since temperatures had been below 60 degrees Fahrenheit (about 15 Celsius), I gave the primer about 48 hours before I tried blocking.

I used 320 grit wet sanding on two different block sizes, a four-incher and a nine-incher. The smaller of the two worked very well on the rear upper quarter panels (the “humps” to each side of the trunk space over the rear wheels). The larger block worked merely acceptably on the larger flat areas on the sides and forward on the body shell. I say acceptably, since the right door gave me a fair amount of trouble. I had built up the rear lower section of the door so that it met the door frame, and I expected that there would be irregularlities that would come through in the marker paint. Oddly enough, the door blocked to a light blue, practically without a bit of marking paint appearing, even though irregularlities were quite easy to feel, and pretty easy to see when the piece was cleaned and shiny with water.

I should add that the “Carolina Blue” color of the primer was not my choice. That’s apparently the only color Tie-Coat comes in, or I would have chosen something else! This is the only time this car will appear light blue, at least as long as I own it.

But, back to the block issue. I didn’t want to use the longer home-made block, since it lacks the soft covering behind the sandpaper, and I didn’t want to gouge the surface with a slip. I do think that either I need to get better with the nine-inch block, or I need to find a much longer block to do the sides. I’ve noticed that the body folks at Classic Jaguar have a huge block with two handles on it to do the side panel and door work. The flat surface of that block must be about a meter long, since it easily straddles the length of the door and overlaps well over the ends of the door frame. A good long block would come in handy when you block up the body shell, the outer sills and the bonnet, I suppose.

Block sanding is not very interesting, though it does have some rules. First, keep the block parallel to the line of contact. In other words, if you are block-sanding a curved surface, the contact points of the surface should be a consistent line from the front to the back of the block. Second, move the block diagonally across the surface, first in one diagonal and then after you cover the surface, along the opposite diagonal. In effect, you make an “X” shape with the directions of your sanding over the surface. Third, thoroughly block the surface, but don’t dwell on any one place too long. With “high-build” primers, it’s pretty easy to oversand an area. And, fourth, use the block, not your hands. You can’t believe how many times you’ll be tempted to “touch” up an area with your fingertips. You can’t believe how many times you’ll screw it up. If you can’t resist the urge, use very, very, very light pressure with your fingertips, and don’t dwell on a specific area. I’ve found that even trying to rub down drips of the brushed primer with fingertips is counterproductive. The block is much better. You’ll need to keep the block quite wet, too. The primer soon turns into a gooey lubricant if you don’t rinse it off. I used warm water with just a few drops of dishwashing soap. The soap seemed to help keep the sandpaper clear, and yet there wasn’t so much in the water that soapy film became a problem. An old cake pan worked great as a container. Wipe the blocked surface with a wet cloth to get the sanded primer out of the way.

I got the entire external section of the upper body shell completely block-sanded in about seven hours, I would guess, after subtracting interruptions and breaks. Like I said, this is not very engaging work. It’s repetitive without a doubt.

I checked the surface by wiping it with some low-concentrate soapy water and then looking at the reflection of flood lights along the surface. The lines should be predictable, and you shouldn’t see small wavers (except where you’d be expecting them). The dark picture shows the floods reflecting against the right side of the car. There are some pit-like reflections that come from small soap bubbles. You can see a wavering of the reflection in the door, where irregularities widen the reflection. I usually get a good long reflection in view and then move up and down to see the reflected line travel across the surface. In the case of this side of the car, I should see a consistent line. I didn’t because of irregularities in the door panel. It still needs work. But the rear quarter panel is in pretty good shape.

I also used a little bit of Evercoat “Easy Sand” body filler to bring up a couple of areas on the left side — one flatness over the rear wheel well that I mentioned before and flatness where I repaired the “fillet” some time ago. Very little of the body filler was required. That Evercoat product, by the way, was good to use and seemed to set well. I now wish I had used the Evercoat body fillers from the beginning.

Second coat of primer

I decided to try brushing the second coat of primer. (I’m planning on three coats for external sections of the car.) Instead of applying a coat that would drip, I applied two fairly thin coats, and I’ve applied a third thin coat to areas I think need a little more coverage. I’ll let the primer dry well and apply a marker coat of paint sometime this week. Then it’s back to blocking again. I’m debating what to do about the nine-inch block. Do I try to use it again? Do I look for a longer block? Do I try to make a long block myself?