[Bill Wallace]

I tool delivery of kmp 557 in late February. I had Kirkham sand it to the 320 grit level. I removed the lights, windshield, hood trunk doors and hardware in around 8 hours with normal hand tools (This was fortunate as I found a handful of bolts had not been thoroughly tightened). I then took it through 600/800/1000 grit steps with a DA sander in about 32 hours. Joe recommended a fairly healthy compressor for that step but I used my old Sears Craftsman 2.5 hp with a 20 gal. tank and it survived the ordeal with no apparent damage.

Last Sunday I spent around 4 hours with the buffer and f9 grade of Nuvite that Joe recommends to polish over half the body. It was much easier to achieve a mirror finish with just one pass of the buffer than I thought it would be.

Before starting the sanding steps I briefly played around with fine scotch brite and found that it is very easy to achieve the brushed look with only light effort. The hardest part of this, as Kirkham's site suggests, is to keep the hand sanding strokes straight as your arm and wrist tends to move in an arc towards the end of a sanding stroke.