Sometimes you must take a few steps backward in order to make a step forward. At least... that's what I keep telling myself after my latest disaster.  As anyone reading this log is well aware at this point, I was somewhat enamored with bondo for doing the small repairs on my aluminum case. Was. As it turns out, this stuff ended up not working so hot when I started preparing it for painting. More details below.  Anyway... I started out by fixing that little tab that fell of with some of my remaining steelstik:   I gave that a good few days to dry, as it's been cold and this stuff takes forever to dry cold. This weekend, I finally had some time to myself, and determined that I would get started with preparing and priming the case for painting! Exciting! Except... during the wet sanding:  Doh! I wasn't even being that rough... letting the P400 wet sandpaper just glide over it as the whole surface was pretty much finely sanded already. And yet... as I continued to sand, more and more of it bubbled up and peeled off:  So much for this stuff working on 'any surface.' Looks like it doesn't bond to aluminum so well. Anyway, I could tell at this point that the bondo was going to have to come off. And the more of it I removed, the weaker the bonds holding the plates got. I finally threw in the towel and punched the plates out, determined to find another way to repair the bottom of the case:  Back to square one... (maybe square -1, as now I have a mess to clean up too...  ). Shut up, you! Even my case-face grew an authoritative mustache just so that he could mock me with his superior knowledge of case repair. Anyway, now I am looking at potential options for a more solid and permanent repair: 1) Find a local aluminum welding shop and see what it costs to get this repair done properly. I'm anticipating it will be too expensive, but who knows? 2) Try some other materials. I found some stuff called "Alumiweld" online that claims it can weld aluminum using just a blow-torch. Reviews online are mixed. The stuff is cheap, however. 3) Find a replacement Lian-Li PC-V2000 online. "Short supply" wouldn't even begin to describe the chances of finding one at this point... as they are very popular, and very old. Anyway, I won't give up just because of this setback! It just might take me a little while to find a proper solution... stay tuned! |