Stern Galaxy Restoration

[Sinbad79]

Thanks,

I'll try be as detailed as needed and hope i dont give away too many 'trade' secrets along the way.
If you have any questions, ask away.

A note on the stencils, they were made by tracing the artwork onto tracing paper, then having office works scan in the image as a digital file.
File was then vectorised in illustrator and sent to a printer.

Still more work to do, but can start to see the end now.

[Sinbad79]

Spent an hour or so this morning puttying and sanding the areas i missed last time, then sprayed the cabinet.
I am a little annoyed that the grain in the plywood is visible through the paint, so i have decided to block back the paint, and then give it another couple coats to fix it. Will need to let the paint cure over a good couple days before im ready to respray.

Pics attached.

[Sinbad79]

And...

[Strangeways]

Sometimes you have to "bite the bullet" and primer undercoat the cabinet to see if there are any imperfections like the grain, knots or delaminating. Looking at a bare wood cabinet does not always tell you enough about your repairs. It is like a new perspective once primed. Black will not hide the problems - so it is good that you addressed everything as soon as you noticed it.

[Sinbad79]

Yea that's right Nino, and further to that, while sometimes these things are visible under primer, its still difficult to tell if it will show through.

I think the problem here was the quality of the primer used.

I'll fix it, it just means more work.

[Sinbad79]

Wanted to show you guys what a 'flat' paint job actually means. Sanding paint 'flat' is where all high spots and low spots in the paint or panel have been sanded even. The images below are during sanding, the high spots appear dull and uniform, whereas the low spots are untouched by the dander and hence are still glossy.

This is the process used to remove the visible grain in the wood, and given I've had to sand through in places, I'll be spraying another coat or two over these panels and repeating the sand process, but with 1200g and upwards. I've used a 400g through this process.





This one side has taken me about an hour to do, so yep, it's a great deal of work, and if restorers are going to this length to restore a cabinet, you can understand why they charge whatever they do.