Sunday, April 15

Busy weekend for me, I think I need another weekend to recover from my weekend. Anyway, Friday I celebrated my birthday with some friends. We all went to a Behnihana (Japanese Steak House) and had some sake, and a fine meal. Then we went bowling after diner. I know bowling sounds like a weird thing to do, but we had tons of fun (at least I did).

Saturday was spent at Lowes purchasing insulation, then went to look at some properties for the winery, then started to insulate my garage.

Sunday was spent finishing the insulation in the garage, then I worked on the drum. It's looking great. A few more weeks of work then I'll be ready to start the final sanding and polishing.

Here is the drum with the tribal sticker in place, and getting ready to remove the backing paper.

Removing the backing paper. Yes, this was very time consuming and a bit nerve racking, but well worth it.

Here is the tribal stick in place and ready for clear coat to go on top. The design is actually mirrored on the other side.

Tribal Sticker

Last night I went to the sign shop to pick up the tribal vinyl sticker I had made. I can't wait for the weekend to come to get that bad boy on! I also found out that it's a very high grade of vinyl so it's really thin. This does 2 things for me ... of course with every good there is a bad. The good: It's thinner than expected, this means it won't take as long to clear coat over it. The bad: It's thinner than expected, this means it's more delicate than I originally thought. So a lot more care is going to needed when placing it on the drum. I'll be a nervous wreck putting it on, but I'll be sure to take some pics of the entire process. Taking a break to take a picture will ensure that I don't rush into anything. I'll have to step back and think about the next step each time. Hopefully I'll have lots to report on Monday for everyone.

Tuesday, April 10

Today I wet sanded the drum to start the leveling process for the tribal sticker. It went really well, it only took me about 45 minutes. Started with 600 grit then moved to 800 grit. The center is very level and smooth and that was the goal, thus I'm very pleased. Some of the edges need fixed, but that's for a later time. Plus, I need to clear coat over the sticker, so most of the edges will kind of work themselves out.

I'll be placing the tribal sticker on this weekend and taking off the old tape and putting some new on. This will give me less clear coat to try and peel off in the end. Lesson learned with Brent's last drum project ... yikes.

I will get pictures up of the drum too, since after the sticker there will actually be something new to see. Right now, it's the same as the previous pictures except its hazy now after the wet sanding. Figured why waste the time getting pictures of that.

Drum Update

Sorry I haven't posted in a bit, but there's nothing really to post. I finally detached the bug in the clear coat, but of course it didn't go smoothly. A paint touch up was required and the clear coat process is still going strong. I was up north this past weekend, so no work was done. Hopefully Wednesday the sign shop will have the tribal stripe done and I can attach that this weekend and start clear coating over it. I'll post some more pics when there is actually something to see, right now it's just a red cylinder as it looked a few weeks ago.

Monday, April 2

And we have yet another downside to painting with aerosol in a garage, bugs. Yup, you guessed it I was spraying my second coat of clear and a gnat was caught in the slip stream of the spay and was immediately adhered to the clear coat. Well so much for spraying my ideal 4 coats before I sand. Looks like I’ll be sanding the bug out tomorrow night and hopefully I won’t have a sand-through to the paint. I just have to put my surgeons hands on tomorrow and be very careful.

So, for your viewing pleasure I present to you the Hickory Horned Devil caterpillar. I'm just glad the bug that was embedded into the clear coat was not this big. And ... no that isn't me holding the caterpillar. I would only hold that if anyone really wanted to hear a grown man scream like a little girl and a lot of money would have to be given to me as well.

Sunday, April 1st

Alright, I guess it's just the primer. It's still loading up the sand paper, but I discovered the lighter I rub the easier it is to sand the primer level. Boy let me tell you I wish the bumps would show up on camera. It's a downfall of using aerosol cans. You'll always get what's called orange peel, they call it that because if you look at the surface of an orange, that's what the surface of the paint looks like. Bumpy. I managed to sand the primer level, only took about 2 hours, but patients is the key to a great finish. I cleaned up all the dust and wiped the drum down. I then was able to put on 4 coats of paint, 2 really light coats, 1 wet coat, 1 final coat just because I wasn't happy with the final color tone. I let each coat dry about an hour each. Then I had to look at the paint in the sun, it makes the metal flakes in it sparkle, it looks really cool in the sun. I tried to take a pic for you all to see, it's shows up some, but in person it really looks good. At the end of the day I sprayed on 1 coat of clear coat. You might be able to see some of the bumpy surface on the picture, that's the orange peel. I'll spray on 3 more coats of clear, then I'll level the orange peel to a smooth surface. Next will come the tribal stripe around the outside. The sign shop guy hasn't called me about that yet, but I have 3 more days of clear coat, so I'm not in that big of a hurry for it.

Saturday, March 31

Today I was able to level the first coat of primer and spray on another coat of primer. I let it cure/dry most of the day and tried to start level sanding the second coat, but for some reason the primer seems soft. It's loading up the sand paper so badly that after 3 strokes or so the sand paper becomes useless from all the build up. So, I'm going to call it a day and let it really dry good over night and tackle the primer in the morning.

Friday, March 30

I sanded the sand and sealer coats level, cleaned the dust off and was able to spray on a coat of primer. I'm going to let that dry over night.