1973 IH Travelall - Family Cruiser, Big project....

Spray gray primer. Solid. Then dust coat black. Block. At the stage you are in now the varying shades of Bondo throw my eye off incredibly. The solid color and guide coat is the only way that it actually makes sense in my brain

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :

I guide coated it all before I blocked... 

Recon1342 said:

If you go with a matte clear coat, it won't show as much. Plus, matte is "in" right now...

Wife says Shiney. It's gonna be Shiney. 

In reply to java230 :

Shiny it is, then. 

In reply to Recon1342 :

As the saying goes..... 

And my wheels come tomorrow. And I didn't tell her yet.... They are a couple weeks early.... 

Might as well sand more off right?

Then started on the Driver side.... And I am out of bondo pretty much. 

I look for high spot triangles. If you join any three high spots it will show you and area that  might need more attention. In order to keep sanding, you need to make one of the high spots go away. I am assuming the door edge is a high spot, at least for illustration purposes

The high spot above the tire would have been made to go away by now.  Its too obvious and hence makin g life harder than it has to be.

The long red line is the crown on the panel and not to be confused with high spots when sanding. It is looking retty good except for two little spots that will come out in the high fill primer stage.

This is the correct move, skim the entire panel and sand it down to you hit a high spot. Dont try to join islands of filler, do the whole panel and sand it down until the first high spot shows up, then read the panel. Individual craters and pits are not the concern.

I followed this guys approach with the "commit to the full panel" philosophy. There is a second video showing the sanding.

In reply to NOHOME :

Thanks Pete, really appreciating the help.

Yes door edge is a obvious high spot from stamping.

In your triangle drawing. I did stop as I was getting metal at the door edge, and the lower left corner there. But I kinda feel like I am making a high artificially. Does that make sense?

And to your crown comment. Does that mean I should take more off along the bottom of that line, in the blue area here?

EDIT: laquer thinner to thin the bondo looks AMAZING. I will have to try that.

The blue line looks good, I would not remove more from there upwards. But you might aim a few hammer hits at the high spot on the door opening as that would allow you to sand a bit more of the filler in that direction.  Might get rid of those rough patches in that area.

That said, do check the door fit at the high spot because it might be at the right height to meet the door edge.

Speaking of door edges, if you are going to level across the door gaps it is always best to tap the edge of the door up  to the level of the surrounding panel, rather than have a  thick filler edge.

and may I just say....DAMN  those panels are huge!

In reply to NOHOME :

Maybe I wasn't clear, should I remove more where that blue line is?

I just bought two more gallons of filler.... They have the five gallon buckets, but they are air pails, and only save 40 bucks over by in gallons

See my previous post, Mr Nohome...
 

Recon1342 said:

I'm pretty sure the surface area on those old beasts is measured in acres, or hectares, or something...

Recon1342 said:

See my previous post, Mr Nohome...
 

Recon1342 said:

I'm pretty sure the surface area on those old beasts is measured in acres, or hectares, or something...

 

Its becoming painfully obvious that this thing is massive. And my first body work project......

It is hard to tell exactly if you are done without running a hand over the panel. Try it with a cotton glove or thin rag and you will be amazed at how obvious it is.

Try a guide coat and a few swipes with the durablock to see if you have any high spots in the area of the blue line.

NOHOME said:

It is hard to tell exactly if you are done without running a hand over the panel. Try it with a cotton glove or thin rag and you will be amazed at how obvious it is.

 

Try a guide coat and a few swipes with the durablock to see if you have any high spots in the area of the blue line.

The towel under the hand is crazy BTW....

That area seems very smooth/flat to me, been guide coated many times now.....

Brown santa Just showed up :)

They look massive!! Hopefully they fit!!

this is ridiculous. Blocked it out again.... I think? More filler?!?!

 I think that you are close. 

You plan to shoot high fill on this thing? If so, your choices are to stay on one panel and play with it until it is perfect and paint ready, or move on and try to reach a common denominator with body fill on the whole body and then go learn how to do the high fill work.

I think there is enough to be learned on that one panel that I would go ahead and complete the job to paint ready stage. I think that what you learn is going to save you a lot of time doing the other 40 acres of tin. Trying to do the whole car's filler work is going to dilute the learning to the point of despair. 

in my world, paint ready would involve getting the hight fill sanded to at least 400  grit and sprayed down with panel-wash to check the reflection.

We have not talked about it yet, but at some point you should think about making some of the taller high spots go away . Like that one over the rear tire. My tool of choice for this game is the shrinking disc.  Easy enough to use and quite effective.  You can kind of fake one if you mount a sanding disc upside down on the angle grinder with a backing pad behind it.

In reply to NOHOME :

​​​​Thank you again 100x

Plan was to do feather fill,but I'm learning that a metric berkeley ton more blocking. This thing is big.... 

It's still got some real low spots it seems. I'll post closer pics tomorrow.

Yes I have seen the shrinking disks. Looks like black magic. Why not a quick hammer whack? Added tension in the metal?

400 grit seems a mile to 20 off still.... I'm using 80 now, hit with 150 then feather fill? 

I dont see any metal so you can keep blocking it out until you do.

Here is a bit similar to what you are working on. Note that when I go for another skim coat, I go all the way to the bodylines, top and bottom,  with the skim and  do the entire surface. I  want it as smooth as possible and  want it to define the space between the bodylines. Then I sand down until  hit the first metal high spot.

Here it is after sanding with 80 grit. Pretty happy at this stage because I dont see  much steel, I have actually stopped at the epocy primer level before I broke through and decided that this is good enough.

Couple of ways you can go post filler. I did featherfill, like two rounds. Spray, go over with the 80 grit ti find any high spots. Knock those down assuming they are filler. Then a second coat of featherfill and that was sanded to 220 or so. By now you should not be weeing too many rub-throughs.  Picture is the first coat of featherfill. I thought I was pretty smooth but you can see where the high filler comes through. so same game, keep sanding until you hit metal and that is as far as you can go, then more featherfill or tap and fix the high spot.

Second coat of featherfill. You can see that there is less sand-through to the filler below. You can also see that I found a bit of localized work in the nose area.

What I did then was switch to a polyurethan primer sealer.  this product is either a high build primer or a sealer depending on how you mix it. I spray on a high-fill coat and sand it to 400. This stuff is no where near as thick as featherfill . That said, it can be used in place of featherfill. Pic below is the Valspar 2800 sanded down to 400 grit, You can see where I am not getting much sand-through to the layers below. That is a very good thing. It means the surfaces are flat. That said, I still took down a few high spots on this round.

Then a sealer coat and wet sand that to 600. You can wash the polyurethane product with water, and it should look like black  gloss paint. The reflections will tell you if you are done. 

If this all looks like it will having you praying for the beer virus to come save you  and your wallet from the job, you are correct. But funny enough, as I got the hang of it, it became kinda a zen thing and I could appreciate the progress and feel good about it.

Thank Jesus I am into tiny little sporty cars.

In reply to NOHOME :

Thank you thank you!

I am hitting metal in these spots, maybe I am still making a high between them, but its not sanding nicely down. Back to 40 grit maybe? Shorter board?

Im getting tired... Adn wishing I had done matte clear over the bare metal at the moment..... Maybe the zen will come at some point.

I so remember being in your shoes wondering what the furk I had got into knowing there was no end until the end. 

Try laying out a tape line top and bottom of the bodyline. Then give it a skim between the tape  and pull the  tape off just before it dries. This will give you a nice crisp line that you know is higher than the bodyline by the thickness of the tape.  Feather your shape out of that in the cross pattern . 

In reply to NOHOME :

I'll give it a try. I still think I may have made a high thru there. No idea tho..... Going to try thinning it with lacquer 

In reply to java230 :

Or take a bit of a break and let your mind digest what you are trying to achieve.

Are you using the monster Durablock or the 16" one.? I would be working with the shorter one working iup and down in an overlaping W pattern rather than try to control the big one at this point. 

In reply to NOHOME :

Rough in with 40 on the 12, they 80 on the 16. Was reserving the big one for feather fill, final sand etc 

In reply to java230 :

yup, that does sound like the right approach. I think you are down to that part of the learning curve where more experience is going to lead to answers. It'll click don't worry.

Pete