A bad day in the shop…..

Is still better than a good day in some other places… like prison for example…

I’ve had the most frustrating day I can remember, today.

Yesterday I finished the welding on the floor of the truck bed. After that I spent the rest of the day sanding (mostly by hand) the entire floor. You see after 25 years of service there was hardly a square inch of the floor that wasn’t scratched and rusting, at least lightly.

All of the ridges in a bed floor, that give it strength, also make it nearly impossible to machine sand. As a result it’s a slow, tedious, manual process, that, I actually felt pretty good about when I had it finished.

The final step for the day was to spray down three coats of a product from ‘Mar-Hyde’ called “One-Step Rust Converter”. Well the fact that I had to spray three coats should have been my first inkling that it wasn’t really a ‘One Step’ process.

This is supposedly some ‘high-tech’ stuff… chemical process this… binds at the molecular level that… mumbo jumbo…

But, I sprayed down the three coats, and watched in amazement as the product began to turn from clear, to purple… then to black… just like the directions said.

I closed the shop down, leaving the doors open and the fans on to pull the fumes out, and went in to get cleaned up for dinner.

After dinner I finished closing up the shop and called it a night.

This morning, I hit the shop with all sorts of ideas of ‘scuffing’ the material I’d put down yesterday, and beginning the final work on the floor.

The first pass of a piece of 180 grit sandpaper over that beautiful black “One Step” product; told me I was in trouble. The stuff had not adhered to the metal, or the rust! It was coming off in quarter and silver dollar sized flakes.

This is like a nightmare. On one hand, I’m glad I discovered it now, and not after I’d put another couple of days work and several hundred dollars of materials in place!! On the other, all that material (and money), paint, sand paper, etc, etc… are wasted, and it’s got to all come off, again.

So… what did I do today? I sanded, scraped and essentially had an instant replay of yesterday. The big question in my mind is ‘why’? Why did this stuff not ‘stick’, or adhere, like you would expect. With those thoughts in my mind, it's sanded, but I didn't put down any sort of sealer, I'll decide on that tomorrow.

Like any good geek, I went to the internet, found their website, and looked for answers… none to be found. Clicked on their ‘forums’ button… only to find it wasn’t a ‘forum’ but a way to submit a question, which I did, but, as yet, no answer.

I have some suspicions, some thoughts on the adhesion problem, but, if I’m right, they definitely should have put it on the label!!

I think, the humidity was too high. They do impress the importance of making sure the surface is clean, and dry. I had degreased it, as well as wiped it all down with a final surface prep… and had let all of that dry. But, the humidity was very high yesterday as it rained almost all day.

I think that moisture interferes with the ‘chemical molecular binding process’ crap… and that it doesn’t have to be wet… it could just be ‘damp’ from the ambient moisture in the air.

So, I’m delayed at least another week before I can begin re-assembly of the truck bed as I have to find out how to solve this problem. If I’m wrong, and it’s not the moisture that’s the culprit, I’m clueless as what else I could have done!!

If any of you reading this, have any knowledge, I’d love to hear what you know!!

I did take some pics, and after I decide what to do tomorrow, I’ll get those off the camera and at least let you see where I am with all of this.

Something tells me I should have just loaded up some good old lacquer primer laid down two or three good coats and moved on… I’m not so sure technology is always the best answer!!