Thursday, April 1, 2010

Painting the 319 Is Getting Closer

Charlie Strong has been making remarkable progress on getting the 319 ready to paint. Among other things, he discovered he needed to replace some of the wood trim above the windows on the north side of the car. About ten pieces of siding and several sections of the drip rail had to be replaced.

This section was the worst. Joel helped him make new drip rail sections. For the tongue and groove siding, I had some pieces I'd made many years ago stored in the 321, but there weren't quite enough. Luckily, Tim had some leftovers from the 1268 which he could modify for our use -- thanks, Joel and Tim!

By the end of the day it looked like this. Charlie is nearly finished, I believe, with applying body filler and sanding it all down.

Meanwhile, I shimmed up another side bearing, and started on a third. I first made measurements of each bearing so I could calculate exactly what spacing is needed at each location.

And I decided to start on some interior work. There were three places inside the car that had been stripped as a test. The biggest one is seen here. I sanded them all down and applied a coat of white primer. More sanding and priming will be needed. For the rest of the walls, I'm hoping only some light sanding will be needed, and then a finish coat will take care of the problems.





And I put a first coat of primer on both sides of four more windows. When these are done, one side of the car will be complete.

And then there's wreck tools. The first aid box and wreck tools were missing when we got the car. I can make a replacement first aid box as I did for the 308, and I have some spare wreck tools. The pry bar and sledge hammer (not shown) were in the IRM collection, and the saw I bought at an antique store in Noblesville, Ind. The saw and pry bar mounted just fine, and can be painted. But the sledge hammer is very heavy, and the tool box is cleverly mounted so that if the sledge were to come loose, it would break through the glass and fall onto passengers. (In the picture, we're looking straight up.) I'm tempted to try making a replica sledge hammer with a wooden head that won't weigh much.

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