Grab rails reborn

The weather has been kind, even though it's pretty cold at least it hasn't rained... which is good when there are twelve holes in the coach roof. This evening I have been trying to get the flaky mouldy grab rails back into shape.

They were in pretty bad shape as can be seen from the picture above.  A couple of hours work with the detail sander, a pressie to myself from Bodge & Screwit  today, had them looking reasonably good again. I had tried, unsuccessfully, to sand these down by hand on Saturday, that's when I decided I needed a sander.

Below are the tools that I used for this, the detail sander as previously mentioned and and a drum sander, on the drill, for getting into the radius' on the under side.



Once a reasonable finish was achieved, I say reasonable as these are by no means perfect, I gave them a coat of varnish. All being well I hope to fit them tomorrow evening.  That should make the coach roof water tight, which means that I can then make and fit the new headlining. I picked up some beech faced 3.5mm ply especially for the job today. It feels like I am making progress but it also feels like time is slipping away.