Quoted from kruzman:I spend forever sanding. Friday I opened a quart of clear hardener. Its a 4 to 1 mix. I had 4 pfs sanded and prepped, and I laid a coat on all 4 and prepped one pf for the next day. The next day in the morning I prepped another, I forget which, and cleared those 2. Yesterday was balls humid so I packed 4 used pfs in custom boxes,for shipping, they were all different sized including an atari which is 48x25 I think, and spent the second half of the day painting the kiss pf.
I just got home from doctor bs, and I have nothing sanded to clear, and that hardener only has about 2 more days before it starts getting crappy. Tomorrow is suppose to be 95 with 75-80% humidity, so no spraying or sanding tomorrow. the sand dust balls up and clogs the paper.my point is half of that qt of hardner is going to go to waste. I am way better off paying the extra 5 bucks each for the half pints, but for some reason they dont stock enough for me.
The DA sanding is not bad, it just makes cancerous dust, and a lot of it. the hard part that takes the time is sanding over the edges. I dont know for sure but it makes sense that if the clear didnt have something to bite on to, it would easily lift as soon as you got to the glossy part that didnt get sanded as part of the flat surface. So even the dimples have a 2 mm ring around them that dont get touched with the sander. It seems to me if I didnt sand that well, if someone drilled or threaded there, it would easily lift. That I have seen happen on repros.
A couple years ago, 2018, I hired a girl with an art background to help sand and do other things. she sanded at 1/3 my speed, and 20 bucks an hour and quit after 4 days. we had about 30 pfs in the shop at that time and all of them needed sanding. so I did the da sanding and the hand sanding for the last block sand, she did the sanding in between coats, and it wasnt worth it to her. a single mother, on welfare and food stamps and medicaid. Plus I was paying cash.
If I had a helper that just sanded I could double my production. I just cant pay anyone to do it. At least the girl I just talked about sanded well enough that I didnt have to redo the whole thing after she did it. That was the case with my other helper. every job, sanding, painting what ever, it was never up to my quality, even when I would explain this is not good enough. rather than doing it better he got all pissed off. I dont enjoy that part of mgmt, and if I am going to have to do it, I will get a job that I at least get paid better, to hate my work.
For now, I just do it and say... "its better than digging ditches"