Body Work Tutorial

Here we can see the panel is ready to be sanded. A few tips for sanding body filler.

1. A sharp piece of sand paper is key to getting a panel straight. If you use too fine of a grit of sand paper you can have a few issues.

If you use too fine of a grit the paper doesn't "cut" the filler, causing you to sand and sand and sand, all of this extra sanding makes the board or block "ride" the humps and bumps. Riding the ups and downs will not get a panel straight. Also a finer grit paper will tend to clog easily.

I always were a good 3m dust mask whenever sanding filler or anything for that matter and I suggest you do too.

Here I am using 80 on a long board. 80 grit is about as fine as I will go on body filler... far too often do I hear people going much finer than this and it's just not a good idea in my opinion.

For the heavy filler USC that I mentioned above I will go no finer that 36 grit. I then use the evercoat to fill those sand scratches and sand the evercoat with 80 grit.

As you can see by the angle of my long board I do not sand in a straight line. It is always helpful to sand at a diagonal to the panel. This will help minimize any low spots better than sanding a panel straight back and forth.

In the final photo the panel is about half sanded and you can see a bit of a low spot. I was able to keep sanding and remove the low spot without any issues.

Next you should go around the panel and make sure everything is feather edged and sanded.

The panel is now ready for primer.