Thursday 11/05/2020
Just a Thursday. Instead of morning aerobics, which was just a video recording, I went for a longish walk (3.8 miles for the day). Later I paid a bill, and generated the new sign-up sheets for the next week of volunteer activities.
One single piece of the MG model is holding up production. This is the one in which I discovered a short, deep scratch. Since this is one side of the bonnet, the scratch would be obvious, blatant, under the clear coat. It had to be filled. Days ago I stripped the primer off it, filled the scratch with plastic putty, sanded it smooth. Just like the guys on Bitchin’ Rides or Overhaulin’.
But then I got hung up on how to re-prime it. The thing is, each time I use the airbrush I have to clean it. So to spray this one piece, about 1 inch by 2, takes like five seconds. Then clean the brush and wait several hours for the paint to harden. And I screwed it up the first time and had to strip it down again (too wet, it ran). Spray. Clean up. Check it next day: there was some kind of divot in the prime coat, a little shallow crater an eighth of an inch across (in other words, fist-size at scale). Was it in the plastic, or had the primer somehow pulled back while wet? I tried sanding it but no, by the time it was smooth the primer was gone.
So today I stripped it, sanded it lightly, and this time primed it using a brush, just flowing on primer wetly and letting it flatten. Which it did. Not uniform color yet, needs another coat. But I’ll do that with a manual brush too.
I continue to regain appetite generally. I also got up the nerve to read up on the TAVR procedure that will likely be recommended if/when my prosthetic aortic valve breaks down: Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement. Note toward the bottom of that page, the procedure is for this, that, and finally “if you have an existing biological tissue valve but it isn’t working well anymore.” Note also in the animation, that they don’t always approach via the aorta. Sometimes they go straight in through the chest wall and the bottom of the heart! Which would be likely for me, I think, given my aorta is full of wire stents.
Codgerville 