Heavy cut polish step is finished. Next step will be the medium cut polish and then the fine polish and buffing.

There are some deep scratches that cannot be removed. I can deal with these war scars.

Looking good!! The scars give it character!!

Cheers

Today I finished the polishing. Medium and fine polishes were applied to remove the haze. I finished with a plastic protector by Mothers.

I am doing this on weekends only, when I get a couple of hours. I will assemble it as soon as possible.

Ok. I am currently fixing the ply separation issues. Yeah, I know. I should have done this before polishing the wrap. At that time I didn't have the required tools with me and the COVID thing was getting serious here. Now I have the right tools to do this properly.

I was planning to use white wood glue but I think I have to use a 2 component Epoxy glue. It's necessary to apply a good amount of pressure to get the plies close to the re-ring. I think the wood glue will not be strong enough.

I scrapped the old glue with a razor blade and a thin plastic stripe. It turn out into white dust and small grains. I finished with stripe of sandpaper. Now the gap is all clean.

Any advice?

It's right solution.

I suppose that it will be good to add in mix some wood dust and 5% diisononilphtalate (you also can use dioctylphtalate or dimethylphtalate - it's cheap, but non-ecological).

Cheers,

George.

I read this too late. The glue transparency is noticeable after clamping the shell. I thought immediately I should have use wood dust to give it some color. Is that your idea? What's the purpose of the diisononilphtalate?

I removed the clamps. I think it is nicely glued. The gap still has room to finish with wood dust and wood glue mix. I will use sandpaper to remove the excess and get a clean bearing edge and a good looking seam.

Next weekend I will finish it.

I filled the gap yesterday. I did a test with water based white glue and wood dust but it didn't turn out good.

I bought a beech wood stick and sanded it out to get some dust with similar color. I did a mix with aproximately 50% wood dust and 50% epoxy glue (maybe more glue than dust). It dries very quickly so you should do it fast. You can see the comparison between the raw wood stick and the dry mix below.

The final result, after sanding, is OK. Maybe it would look better if I had use a darker wood.

Anyway, it is better thant it was before. Solid and nicely smooth.

With direct light you can see the beech of the re-rings is darker than the mix. Well, I guess it will be for another 50 years :)

Before vs after

The heads should arrive next week. I will assemble it (finally) and take some pics for you guys. Cheers