Gloved Up
Gloved Up
A Day of Refinishing
Today was spent mostly stripping the finish off of the interior wood trim surround for the windows and windshield. After starting on it yesterday and getting some chemical burns on my arms from aircraft stripper getting flicked onto them, I started out with a trip to Harbor Freight to get some gloves that covered my arms and would stand up to the stripper.
Once I had the gloves I set up shop outside and started stripping parts. With three coats of stripper I was able to get about 95% of the finish off of the pieces. I’ll go back and spot treat some areas that were stubborn. Because I was gloved up and handling chemicals I didn’t take pictures, but you can see the finished product here:
You can see where one of the top windshield pieces still has some finish in the corner, so I’ll have to go after that a little more aggressively. You may also notice between the two pictures that one of the top windshield pieces came apart.
Not a big deal, as nothing broke, the glue just failed on the splines that hold the two pieces together. This is actually a good thing, as regluing this with the splines free shouldn’t be too big of a deal. Better that the joints came apart than having broken wood - that’s far more difficult to repair.
The discoloration around places like the screw holes is simply from age and moisture intrusion into the wood, since the finish in these areas is thinner, or the finish was worn away by the presence of the fastener rubbing against it. Moisture will get into the pores of the wood and actually cause the wood to rot and discolor, much like you might see when someone leaves a ring from a glass on a wood table and it’s not cleaned up afterwards.
Not a lot I can do about this without getting pretty aggressive with things like bleach, which is tricky at best. I’ll do what I can to disguise it when I stain the wood.
Just for grins I put some stripper on one of the scratched hubcaps I have to see how it deals with the paint. Took nearly all of it off in one application:
I’ve already got the paint for these from Tower Paint, so I need to strip the rest of them and get them masked off for painting.
I polished and waxed the right side of the car, the last area that needed this done, so now the exterior of the car has been dealt with. My shipment of hoses from BelMetric comes tomorrow, so I’ll be able to get some more engine compartment hoses sorted out. I should have a stock order from the dealer coming late this week as well, so that will give me plenty of things to do for the weekend. In the meantime I’ll continue to work on the wood trim and get the last areas stripped so I can start refinishing this weekend, too.
Tuesday, January 1, 2019