TORSO

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The torso has required more work than I ever imagined. Because I have sanded most of the torso bands to give them a smoother surface and sharper angles, I removed quite a bit of gel coat. This exposed the raw fiberglass underneath. The beauty of gel coat is that it presents a perfectly smooth surface. Fiberglass, on the other hand, inevitably has lots of tiny air bubble holes. Daily, I would inspect the torso for pin holes and stress cracks that seemed to form in the all eight of the lower vertical torso bands. Stress cracks would also appear around the margins of the neon mouth area. Once detected, these deficits would be filled with glazing putty.

After the putty had dried, I sanded the excess away and smoothed the surface of the torso. Then, to make it easier to see my work, I applied a coat of primer over the orange-colored putty. Now that a uniform color had been restored, I could better detect any previously unnoticed pin holes and cracks.

The irony of the situation was that I finished each day's work  absolutely certain that I had found every last pin hole and crack. Then, the next day, with fresh eyes, I would always find at least ten pin holes and three stress cracks that I had previously missed. I am almost convinced, however, that new holes and cracks would appear over night where there had not been any defects before. I have no idea how the pin holes could appear by themselves, but I fear that the stress cracks are a result of my picking the torso up and moving it around. This particularly troubles me because I would not want these cracks to appear after the torso has been painted.

This particular project took nearly two months. I pretend to myself that I have completed it, but I am actually just afraid to examine the torso too closely now.

Click the thumbnail image to see the full-sized image.

Here is the torso freshly primed after a session of hole filling. It is now ready for a new inspection.

I found more holes and cracks! These have been filled in with the orange glazing putty.

You can see that the pin holes can appear anywhere on the torso. Note the putty filling a stress crack in the lower vertical torso band to the left of the side vent.