I''ve made a bit more progress, just haven't been posting. The hood, doors, and fenders are all stripped now. One fender is trashed too bad to fix, the other is in pretty good shape, both doors are pretty straight with the normal rust at the bottom edge, and the hood is really nice except the edge of the nose.
I also started the bodywork on the upper part of the bedsides. I'll wait to do the lower section once the bed floor is welded back in, it's too flimsy as-is.
I always block the "flat" sections first, first the top and then the side, leaving the rolled area for last. The flats need to be established first before rounding the curved area. I stopped blocking as soon as I saw epoxy showing through, continuing to block will result in low spots.
Once the flats are blocked straight I spray more guide coat on the flat areas then carefully block the curved section until it blends evenly into the flat areas. The guide coat shows how far you're blending the curve into the flats.
All work up to this point is done with 80 grit on a 3/8" thick acrylic sanding block. The acrylic has a hard surface force the sandpaper to cut the high areas down quickly and 3/8" is stiff enough to not flex. 80 grit is aggressive enough to shape the surface without leaving excessively deep scratches. Once everything is shaped with 80 grit I clean the surface well and apply more guide coat, then block it again with 180 to prep for primer. This round of blocking will show if you blended the curves into the flats evenly.
After spraying a couple coats of epoxy to seal the bodywork. You can see how straight the flats are, how crisp the edges are, and how evenly the curved areas blend into the flat areas. This will be further refined with polyester high build.
