Finally, under primer. Question about the doors...Happy Holidays, too!

[Valkster]

Hi, all. It has been a while since my last post. Weather here in east Tennessee broke in my favor over the long Christmas weekend (67 degrees) so I was able to prime outside. It is nice to see her all one color again, very motivating. Thanks to everyone for their insight on the process, and especially so to Jeff K. for his posts on jigs/fixtures for doors/hood/trunk lid. They all worked well, except I will extend the doors further out from the fixture post as I had trouble getting into the front areas with my primer gun (my bad). I even primed a fiberglass fender that came with an old 'Vette I bought years ago to use as a test piece for my priming/painting/clear/buffing process.
I've already started block sanding the outside skin of the doors and the hood with 150, using powdered guide coat to help me with low spots. The hood looks great and will finish out nicely as-is. I ran into trouble with the doors, however. I am using a long 11" Dura Block sanding block, and I have hit gel coat in the middle of both doors (where the reinforcing bar is) while still having powdered guide coat on either side of it. I had already "worked" this low area with a light skim of filler before priming but it still isn't right. I know this is a general autobody question...is this normal? I plan to reprime the low areas on the doors with a few coats, then recoat the entire outer door skin to give me a higher build in the low areas when starting the process over. Does this make sense? Would I have been better using a shorter Dura Block (8" for example) and simply blending that high spot in the center of the door into the lower areas on both sides?

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Happy New Year,
Mark

[Jeff Kleiner]

Hey Mark,
Been away from the forum for a few days while visiting family for the Holidays and just spotted this. Primer looks good! Yeah, go for a shorter block. There's almost no area on these cars that have 11 inches of flat. I use those long blocks diagonally across fender tops and across the hood and front and rear cowls (which still have a crown) to make sure that there aren't ripples but there really isn't much of anywhere to be found that you're going for dead flat. The doors have curve both horizontally and vertically so focus on smooth rather than "flat-flat".

Jeff

[Valkster]

Ahh, thanks Jeff! I had figured that after blocking some of the rest of the body, so I appreciate the insight. I'm going to a to do a lot more blocking and go back over the problem areas with primer as needed before the next step. The last vehicle I did was a Jeep CJ8...a lot of flat areas on it, so this time around (years later) is a quite a bit different.

A belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you!
Mark Valk