Thread: Followed Me Home, '33 Build

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Roger, The old "masking tape on the run" trick worked better on old Alkyd and Acrylic Enamels than it does on modern Urethanes, but it's still useful. For small runs in the clear, I just let them harden completely and then "shave" them off. I have a piece of an old Vixen file about 1 1/2 inch long. I wrap each edge with a strip of masking tape and then shave the run down until nothing more is coming off. At that point, the remaining part of the run is only as thick as a piece of masking tape, so it sands and buffs easily.

As for the hood - where the old 'glass meets the new and shows up - that's called "read-out". I worked at Eckler's Corvette years ago; any area of a car or fiberglass part that had the gelcoat disturbed got re-gelcoated before final sanding and paint. If you didn't gelcoat the new 'glass work on the hood after you finished working on it, that could be the problem. If you gelcoated it and it's still showing, it could be a difference in the resins (whatever you used may be slightly chemically different than what the hood was made of) and the new and old 'glass have different shrink rates. My advice is leave it alone for about a year until the new 'glass is "seasoned". If it's still showing read-out then (or if it gets worse) and you decide you just can't live with it, strip the hood, give the whole thing a fresh coat of gelcoat, and repaint it.

Originally Posted by J. Robinson

Roger, The old "masking tape on the run" trick worked better on old Alkyd and Acrylic Enamels than it does on modern Urethanes, but it's still useful. For small runs in the clear, I just let them harden completely and then "shave" them off. I have a piece of an old Vixen file about 1 1/2 inch long. I wrap each edge with a strip of masking tape and then shave the run down until nothing more is coming off. At that point, the remaining part of the run is only as thick as a piece of masking tape, so it sands and buffs easily.

As for the hood - where the old 'glass meets the new and shows up - that's called "read-out". I worked at Eckler's Corvette years ago; any area of a car or fiberglass part that had the gelcoat disturbed got re-gelcoated before final sanding and paint. If you didn't gelcoat the new 'glass work on the hood after you finished working on it, that could be the problem. If you gelcoated it and it's still showing, it could be a difference in the resins (whatever you used may be slightly chemically different than what the hood was made of) and the new and old 'glass have different shrink rates. My advice is leave it alone for about a year until the new 'glass is "seasoned". If it's still showing read-out then (or if it gets worse) and you decide you just can't live with it, strip the hood, give the whole thing a fresh coat of gelcoat, and repaint it.

many years ago i pick up one of them vixen files sold by stec ? made for paint drips came mounted in a small wooded block .i did not like it. still in the top of my tool box .i use to take a razor blade single strait blade and round the corners off and use that. they work good and what we call... a snot block ..it was like 1200 girt in a small block that you could sand to form it to the shape of panle you where sanding what was nice about the block as it was soild grit it could be sanded if it started to load up
use to do alot of SMC and used fiber gell made by swiss had very good hold out . the good old days alkyd and enamels with no kicker will weed out the good painters fast

Pat - I have one of those little blocks, but mine has teeth like a Bastard file. I don't like it either. It leaves scratches that are as difficult to deal with as the run I'm trying to remove! I've seen other painters shave a run with a razor blade, but when I try that it always digs in and leaves a divot in the paint that has to be sanded and repainted. I guess I don't have "the touch" needed to make it work. I've never seen what you call the "snot block". Do you know where it came from? I'd like to try one.

You're right about old-time enamel. I remember old Dupont Dulux; no hardener, no cross-linker, just paint and reducer. If you could spray that stuff and get a good gloss with no runs, you were a MASTER PAINTER! Life in the paint booth was suddenly much easier when acrylic enamel hit the market...

Jim,
I like your tip with the short section of a file. I use the razor blade in much the same way, with a couple of pieces of tape on the ends to limit the cut, as long as the blade remains upright in a scraping action. My "paint guy" gave me that tip, and I've found it works good but the tape does get cut down pretty quickly and needs to be changed as needed or the whole blade starts cutting.
DSC00236.JPG

I also found that rounding the corners of the blade, like Pat mentioned, is not a bad idea, as they can punch through and dig in quickly on inside curves.

I think what Pat is calling a "snot block" is pumice stone that's kept soaking in water. Meguire's made mine, called a Uni-grit Sanding Block - comes in 1000, 1500 and 2000 grit.

MegsSandingBlock011.jpg

It's about 1x1x2.5", and as you use it grooves wear into the surface and it has to be "re-surfaced". A piece of adhesive backed sand paper on a piece of glass works great for this, but they wear quickly. This is mine, in 2000 grit now 1/4" thick, after using it a bunch.

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I'm interested in the gel-coat information, Jim, and really appreciate your insight. I did not know that the gel-coat could be re-applied to blend repairs - thought it was only an initial layer inside the mold, which then got the fiberglass laid in on top. I'll have to look into the option of a new top coat of gel-coat if that's what it takes. I'll definitely be re-painting the hood in the Fall/Winter, as I have two (at this point) bubbles that I need to puncture and glue down with super glue in a syringe. After the summer fun I'll look at working down those areas, prepping the whole hood and re-spraying primer, color and clear.

I can't seem to find my little piece of Vixen file or I would post a pic of it. For anyone reading this who doesn't know what a Vixen file is (cometimes called a Vixen rasp), it's a flexible file with big curved teeth (8 teeth per inch) normally used for doing sheet metal straightening and shaping lead. Eastwood and other auto repair suppliers sell them. I attached a pic of one. I had a piece cut off about 1 1/2 inches long.

We used two kinds of gelcoat when I worked at Eckler's. They stocked a sprayable gelcoat in quarts and gallons and we also made our own sometimes by mixing body filler with resin (more about that later). The surface being gelcoated had to be bare fiberglass or gelcoat; there could be absolutely no paint or primer on the surface. We prepared it by sanding it with 80 grit. The commercial stuff was a polyester resin based product that contained talc (like primer). It had to be mixed with liquid hardener, just like regular resin. If the gelcoat needed to be thinned, it was reduced with liquid styrene. A small area could be applied with a brush, but the application was smoother if it was sprayed. If spraying, it had to be done immediately before it set up in the gun. After hardening, the gelcoat was sanded to final paint-readiness. If we sanded through the gel anyplace, it had to be prepped and gelcoated again!

For small areas (like your hood edges), we sometimes used a mixture of ordinary body filler and polyester resin (It's advisable to use regular body filler, not the lightweight stuff that contains glass beads). We would put a blob of body filler in a cup (butter tubs work good for this) and stir in resin until we had a brushable mixture. Then add the liquid hardener, stir it up and brush it on the prepared area.

Whichever method you choose, make sure you blend it onto the existing gelcoat far enough that it can be "feathered out" and apply it thick enough you can sand without going too thin or breaking through. If you're going to spray the commercial stuff, get a cheap gun that you won't use for anything else ($9 at Harbor Freight?) because if the stuff kicks in the gun you'll have to throw it away.

Roger, I sanded through the gelcoat on my '34 in many different places. I did not apply a new gelcoat, but I did use a catalyzed sealer before priming. Nothing lifted or bubled where I added body filler or fiberglass.

Originally Posted by Henry Rifle

Roger, I sanded through the gelcoat on my '34 in many different places. I did not apply a new gelcoat, but I did use a catalyzed sealer before priming. Nothing lifted or bubled where I added body filler or fiberglass.

Jack,
Mine got two coats of catalyzed epoxy primer and a guide coat, then blocked to ID low's which were filed with body filler & finish sanded. Once "ready" it got two coats of epoxy primer, blocked w/ 500grit, then base & clear. I thought the epoxy primer would do the trick, and when I talked to the guy who made the body about extending the hood he never mentioned needing to gel-coat new glass, even when I called him after it revealed the edges.

i will dig my vixen paint drip file up and shoot a photo of it it was a vixen type file and i think the company that made it was stec ...still have some of my body metal / lead files left over from body work. Roger yes them are the block.s but 2000 is way to fine for a drip i know a guy that still sand out color paint to top coat clear over it with 400 grit wet. use to make up sanding blocks out of paint sticks cut them down round the corners off and use 600 wet then go up to 1000. finish to 1200 or 1500 and buff

should not need to re gell like said all it is as a polyester resin (most are) with a filler much like body filler but you can spray gell . many of the old vet guys loved the Ever Coat feather fill i used it but was to much $$ for me .i used the PPG DZ primers till the K2s came out . sounds like to me you had a issue with thiners driveing in and then coming up and out of the finish . that.s were you get rings from. i done alot or glass/SMC over the years for race cars and the air planes stuff for Jon and i block most the gell off many parts never had to much things go side ways less the parts did not have good product on them from the start. just bad gell . did alot of glass parts were they were raw NO gell and hold out was not bad as one would think for the air planes were they needed to look good and be very lite for the aerobatics planes Jon allways watch how much paint was put on so fast cover colors were a plus to keep the weight down

After getting over the initial anger of a pair of bubbles and some movement in the outer hood surface I'm going to let it cook in the Kansas summer sun and then evaluate it in the Fall regarding how to go. Everyone I've talked to says that a couple of months should have been plenty of time for total cure, regardless what temperatures it was during that time, but then something "cooked off" to cause some bubbles. Not the end of the world. Better to be looking at re-coating the hood than the top

Originally Posted by rspears

After getting over the initial anger of a pair of bubbles and some movement in the outer hood surface I'm going to let it cook in the Kansas summer sun and then evaluate it in the Fall regarding how to go. Everyone I've talked to says that a couple of months should have been plenty of time for total cure, regardless what temperatures it was during that time, but then something "cooked off" to cause some bubbles. Not the end of the world. Better to be looking at re-coating the hood than the top

to fix it will not to be re gell coated . part of it may be it is a black car and most air set resins start to move around 130 or so you have to post cure some stuff or glass needs to be very thick if air cured glass to hold up to the suns heat . i sanded most gell off as this is the first spayed in the mold if the glass part made that way many times there is void were there is not glass up to the gell then if not checked for voids. if you do not then they will pop up in the finish.i did a jegs drag 34 chevy roadster that young blood did the art for? went over every inch of the body with a nail and pop all the voids of before i started blocking it all out found many voids. i had to fill with glass filler.most voids were off the body lines . on turbo teds waymans grand national buick that was all VFN glass but the rear clip was steel and was black pick up a second place at cobo in detroit in the class were that car was placed in . on just the hood we stop counting hours of time past 40 hours in just the hood many hours on the parts

Roger, just catching up and reading what's going on since my last post, I must say you are the poster boy for perseverance. I'm learning so much from you sharing before I paint my Coupe. Thank you for not giving up and staying with this. You are inspirational! Your car looks awesome as is!

I, too, have worked fiberglass many times without repairing the gelcoat and got away with no read-out. Nine times out of ten, no problem. But when I worked at Eckler's, anything that got 'glassed got re-gelcoated. The boss didn't want that one-time-out-of-ten chance of read-out ruining the finish on a $40,000 custom Corvette (40K was a lot of money in 1981!). I'm glad all these folks have had remarkable luck with their 'glass work and we can argue about this all week, but if you've already had read-out problems once and you do everything the same way again, you will more than likely have them again in the same places. Albert Einstein once said,"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result!" When you finally get around to stripping and repainting your hood next winter, why not add that little bit of extra assurance by brushing on some gelcoat over the problem areas? An extra hour or two may save some further grief.

I'm with Jim on the gel coat!!! Had a Merc body in 'glass that was the "1 out of 10"... Did some gelcoat on the bare glass areas, no more problems....

Or, the common sense rationale; If 'glass doesn't need gel coat, why do all the companies making 'glass bodies go to the extra time and expense of using it?

Some thing nobady has touched on is the quality of the resin used in the repair.
That JUNK you buy in the gallon cans @ the supply house or big box stores is not the hi quality resin that N&N uses.
Just my 2 cents and 45+ years of playin with glass, both auto and marine