Prepping for Paint - Just an Update

The best laid plans of mice and carriage restorers...Things like husband's knee surgery, and a tractor that needed its 30 year old hoses replaced (displacing the carriage body in the shop!), bad weather,and generally tiring of sanding, slowed progress way down on the carriage body!

When last we met, I believe I had brushed a coat of primer over the entire carriage body.

In this photo, the carriage body has received four brushed coats of primer.  Then it was "fogged" with a light coat of rattle-can paint of a contrasting color.  Now the object is to sand the whole bugger down AGAIN, until all that "guide coat" has been sanded off.  At that point, the surface will be essentially flat, and free of brush marks.

This photo is looking straight down at the top of a panel, and the upper part in the photo is actually looking straight down at the sill.  This is to show the guide coat, and some sanding progress.  The left hand side has been sanded quite a bit, the right hand side only enough to show the brush marks that need to come out.

Even with four coats of primer and using the utmost care, it's so danged easy to sand through to bare wood!  Especially on corners and edges.

I'll have some touch-up to do before I can paint.  Plan to use Rustoleum rattle-can primer (which is compatible with this Schwartz primer) on the bare spots and some extremely careful sanding, probably with 600 grit.

This is the inside of the front panel and sill, pretty much ready for paint.  I have some more sanding at the upper edge, but that will all be done when the rest of the major sanding is done.

I had pretty much finished sanding the outside of the left seat riser, and had a couple of depressions where I couldn't sand away the guide coat, meaning they were a little deep.  So I stopped sanding and filled the spots with 3M Acryl-Green spot putty, a product that can be applied between coats of paint.  Unfortunately, as you can see, getting all the putty off got me down to wood.  There is also wood showing along the little ledge just under the repairs.

This is the stuff that works between coats of paint.

The area's been sprayed with a couple coats of Rustoleum sandable primer.  Will sand this back cautiously with 400 grit wet tomorrow.  Or later...

Sanding has really sped up since I started using 150 grit wet to level most of the brush strokes...at this point, I'm ready to go to 220 grit...

(click on images for more detail)

...until most of the guide coat is gone, and the 150 grit sanding scratches are smooth...

...Then finish up with 400 grit wet.

Right now I'm just trying to do the gross sanding.  Will do the delicate work around corners and edges later (so I can touch up all the bare spots all at once!)

Just for a little desperately needed gratification, I switched from sanding the inside of the panels to sanding the outside.  Ready to work off the last of the guide coat here...

And that's about as far as I got today.  LOTS of guide coat here to flat down.  If I can manage about an hour a day of sanding, I'll probably be ready to think about painting in a week or so.

Finished by Christmas? Probably not...