Fiberglass Door Panel Project, Sanding

Hey   jargonscott you going to finish or what?....Did you do that test of the flex stone stuff yet?

...and that prog didn't do the menus is said it was going to do...

The fleck stone turned out it probably would be too flakey, even after clear coating but I found some textured paint stuff over at Home Depot that seems more solid and I'll probably use that after I get the door as smoothed out as it can possibly get. Hopefully, providing I don't sand upon any holes, I can at least start thinking about that come Wednesday :D

Exactly, I have tried this bondo with resin thing and it does not work near as well as you would think.  The resin is more than three times as hard to sand and will clog your sandpaper up real quick, even if you are using 40 grit.

Bondo can lay very, very flat and smooth and be sanded quickly if you have some practice and get the timing right.  Start with 40 grit or comparable and when, and ONLY when, you think everything is perfectly straight and no waves or high spots or low spots ( low spots you have to re-fill) then go ahead and give it a thin coat of polyester filler for the sand scratches and pinholes, then once over with 80 grit for smoothness, and the thing will prime straighter and better than you could think.

Hope you can make it turn out good, it sounds easy typing, but it takes a whole lot of work.

i cant agree with that. Bondo is just resin and talc powder more or less. its easier to sand to some degree, but, as i have just finished a set of panels i was working on, the magic mix (rage extreme and resin) was the perfect finish for the doors. self leveling, smooth, and about as close to finished product as i could get anyway. i mixed it 50/50 so it was more like a thick house paint consistency, and with some mid-grade quality DA sander discs folded in half (80 grit) the panels were ready for high build primer in no time. i use the mix for a contiguous coating on the piece im workin on.. hope that helped.

-J