Imperial Home Page -> Repair -> Body -> Paint & Body -> Part 6
Elijah's comments in italics, Kerry's in normal text.
And we sanded, and rubbed, and rubbed, and buffed and buffed all day long. Tedious, tiring work.
Unless someone's paying you a LOT of money, this part of the job has to be a labor of love. Buffing a car takes a good deal of care and patience -- not to mention a strong back! The good part is that you can really see the results of your efforts. It doesn't take long for the shine and luster of the paint to begin to show through.
About 5pm Monday, Ken came out and did hand rubbing and polishing.
Doesn't Ken look intent upon his work? The more sets of hands, the better, because this is a lot of car to polish!
All in all, I'm really pleased with the way the hood turned out. It's not perfect, but I drive this car a LOT (she has 234,000+ miles as of this writing), so even if the hood had come out perfect, it wouldn't have stayed that way for long. To my eyes, it looks ever so much better sporting a nice, shiny paint job, rather than the dull layer of surface rust it had before we began working on the car.
Elijah finished re-sanding the hood and it soon buffed out to a very high gloss. All the warts are gone. There are a few sanding scratches that need to be sanded out with finer grit and rebuffed but you can only see them if you look. This certainly passes the 5 foot test. Again, metallics are very hard to paint and do not sand/rub out very well because the metallic lays in the paint differently in each coat, based on the direction of movement of the spray gun, etc. As you color sand through a layer, the paint LOOKS slightly different because of the way light reflects off the metallic. Solid colors don't have this problem.
I'm no Julia Child, but I do make a mean dish of salmon! In fact, I think I probably do better work in the kitchen than in the body shop. But making a good dinner was a fun way to round out a loooooong day of work, and I think everyone enjoyed it. And if anyone wants the recipe, just ask!
Elijah had told the group in Anniston that he was worlds best chef of baked salmon and we took him up on his offer to cook dinner. Don't know if it's the worlds best or not but it was the best I've had.
Elijah's 71 Body and Paint Homepage
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