Block Sanding the 944 to 180 grit

Well, block sanding isn't very exciting to write about or to take pictures of. I was thinking about doing time lapse photos of it all, but I kept getting sanding dust all over the camera, and so I nixed that idea.

One thing I have to say is that I went through a lot less sandpaper than I thought I would. Earlier, I noted that I opted out of the 5 sheet sandpaper pack for $9, and instead bought a roll of 50 meters (by 2.5 inches wide) of sandpaper that was adhesive backed to stick right to mysanding-blocks, and it only cost $15. I thought I would use most of it. By the end of the project I think I'll only use about a third of the 180 grit roll, and that is switching paper more often than I need to. I'll probably only use about a fifth of the 400 grit roll. I measure out how much is left when I'm all done.

Another thing I learned is that block-sanding is not too technical, and can be done by just about any manual laborer with a few pointers. Here is a picture of my wonderful mom who came out and spent a morning block sanding with me. She did an amazing job, and saved me several hours. Here you can see her working with the round block on the curve over the rear fender.

Here is the car with the driver side block sanded. (sorry for the lousy picture, I had the use my cell phone because I forgot my nice camera.) Notice that I left the car taped up to keep dust from getting in all the cracks, which would then have to be cleaned out before painting.

I don't have pictures for the rest of the block sanding, so here is the total tabulation for all the time spent block sanding, over the course of many days.

Time spent:
10-2: 5 hours (3 hrs: drivers side; 2 hrs: part of back of car)
10-17: 3 hours (sunroof, part of passenger side, pillars, roof)
10-18: 2 hours (passenger door and rocker, mirror and bumpers)
10-19: 4 hours (3 hrs: finish blocking rear of car; 1 hr: bondo some missed low spots)
10-20: 3 hours (2 hrs: block sand applied bondo; 1 hr: re-spray primer over bondo.)
10-26: 3 hours (block sand newly primer'ed spots where bondo was applied)
10-27: 2 hours (block sand front spoiler and bumper-corners and gas cap)

Total time spent block sanding to 180 grit: 22 hours
Money spent: $0 [blocks ($40) and 180 grit sandpaper ($15) were already calculated earlier in the project.]