This is the Sand Blasting Gallery

Having removed all the rust I knew about, welded in new metal, lead loaded the seams, skimmed and shaped the bodywork, I thought I was ready for paint, so I hunted around for a decent paint sprayer and found one at the TVR and Jaguar specialist 'Racing Green' in Hampshire (no longer there). An indicative figure was provided subject to seeing the car of course. So on on the fateful day the painter came round to my house to take a look at the car and give a firm quote. He was very critical and said there were some areas that could be improved upon but on closer inspection he noticed some fine cracks and mentioned that this usually meant the underlying paint was unstable and took out a paint thickness measuring tool to investigate. With a sharp sucking in of breath he said the paint was way too thick already and he wouldn't put any more paint on top of that... Rather disheartened I asked what the options were - his recommendation was to strip the car back to bare metal and start again. You can imagine how that made me feel, but deep down I knew he was right. So I located a local sand blaster who had worked on classic cars before and gave him the job. It was amazing how much more rust he discovered. It was also amazing just how much blast media I came across over the following years where it had obviously been shaken out of cavities etc. I am not sure that I would go this route again but it did get me back to bare metal and naturally identified the need for yet more bodywork.