Cool McCool's Garage

See that guy, with polishing compound in his beard, ears, eyes, reflected in the trailer?  That guy, yup, right there, the one who said he wasn’t going to polish another trailer, that this one would be painted.  Looks like he’s polishing a trailer, doesn’t it?

I was going to simply acid wash the trailer and call it good for this fall, but after I got done with the wash, I didn’t like how it looked.  I had bought a new buffer, pads, and Nuvite polish from Vintage Trailer Supply, so I had everything on hand, and started in.  I bought some 3M Super Duty rubbing compound, which I’ve used in the past for the first cut, but it’s SO messy, greasy, flings all over, that I tried the Nuvite G7 I’d bought, and it works MUCH better!  Not nearly as dirty (although you wouldn’t know that by looking at me!), cuts better, and doesn’t fill the bonnet with greasy left over compound.  It’s a winner.  C grade compound after that for the 2nd cut, and it’s as good as I can get it with a rotary buff.  I’ll have some residual swirl marks, but it’ll be fine.

I realized both of my step ladders, and the planks I use as scaffold to get up on the roof and polish are at our sons house in Dexter, they  used them painting and a little kitchen remodel in their new home.  The steel ramps on sawhorses are great for doing the sides, I can’t get up on the roof to polish.  Darn.  So, I’m going for a tu-tone bare metal scheme, only the sides below the drip rail will be polished (for now), the roof and back will be left the dull white acid wash.  Later, when I recover from polishing the sides, and I have my ladders and planks back, I’ll get ambitious and do the rest.  For now it’ll look interesting, and much, much better than it did.

Tomorrow I want to get the 2nd cut completed on the curb side (shown), I still have to do the upper panels between the windows, and then move on to the street side.  It should go faster than today, since the wash is done, I should be able to polish the rest in about 4 hours.  Then, I’d like to get started on the screen doors and get the curtain rods up.  Kim is finishing up the curtains tonight, so it’d be nice to see the interior with the barkcloth curtains in.

In other news, the Zip-Dee awning arrived today, my buddy Jake Moomey is going to stop by Saturday and help install it, he put one on his Spartan this spring hours before they left for Camp Dearborn, so he’s experienced!

That’s all until tomorrow, time to take an Aleve and pass out…