Blog Being Suspended

I've decided that, with a healthy YouTube channel (thank you!) and, in my opinion, a better video product that blog product, it's time for me to suspend regularly updating the Roundtail Restoration blog. I'm always behind and it's become increasingly difficult to keep up. Where I am now with the restoration (constant sanding and spraying) is very repetitive and not very exciting. Writing posts that I think are informative and useful has become quite a challenge.

But, Roundtail Restoration is not going away. Domains are cheap, Blogger is free, and there's a lot of good information in here.

Note that I did use the word "suspend". When I start to get into the reassembly phase, things will get much more exciting and there will be many new lessons to learn. At that point, I will resume regular posts.

I want to thank each and every one of you, my subscribers especially. The support has been amazing and your feedback well taken. I will maintain the subscriber's list. When I make an update, I will let all of you know, as usual.

If you would like to cancel your subscription, please email me here. If you'd like to subscribe, email me here.

As always, feel free to reach out if you have any comments or questions. If you haven't subscribed to my YouTube channel, please subscribe by clicking this link. If you don't want to subscribe but want to visit, please click this link.

Thank you!

For convenience, here are all of the recent videos that I have not already posted in the blog:

Proof of Paint Methods | Roundtail Restoration

To make sure I knew what to expect and try to learn some lessons, I took an old 240Z fender that was in bad shape, stripped it down to bare metal, and built it back up through base coat and clear coat.

I used the same methods and steps that I am using on Dorothy. I learned several things along the way, including the fact that I had my gun set up improperly since...well, since I started painting.

Turns out the regulator needs to be the last thing in the air line before the gun. I had the desiccant filter in there. So, my air pressure, while indicating the "right" pressure, was reading artificially high because of the back-pressure provided by the desiccant filter. Since I'm a rookie and didn't really know what the correct spray pattern looked like, outside of a "cat-eye", I went with it. I'm usually smarter than that.

All in all, I was happy with how it turned out, though I have more to learn on cutting and buffing. Based on my new gun set up, I took some of the panel back down to bare metal and will be doing another section again, up through clear coat, just to make sure I know what, if anything, I need to change.

Here are the videos of the series and the dedicated video to how I figured out I was doing it all wrong. Thanks!

The Nuts and Bolts of Nuts and Bolts | Roundtail Restoration

If you were ever in the military, you probably know that there is a procedure for everything...and I do mean everything. For the Navy, this includes how to use threaded fasteners properly.

Now, before you think that this may be a simple thing, remember that the Navy operates warships in the harshest environments on the planet. Just like most complex mechanical objects, these warships are held together with countless threaded fasteners...nuts and bolts.

The removal, inspection, and tightening of these threaded fasteners is vitally important to ensure that one of this nation's warships can go into harm's way, take battle damage, and come out victorious and still afloat.

The Navy's procedure for the use of threaded fasteners is Naval Ships Technical Manual 075. This publicly available document is simply awesome if you want to know the theory behind and methods used to ensure your threaded fasteners are properly tightened and stay that way.

I did a 4-part set of videos focusing on the classic car application of NSTM 075. I'll warn you that a lot of it is me talking, but there's a lot of good information in there. I hope you learn something!