The undertail. This undertail is gonna be a serious challenge. I should have expected that the most expensive piece and the coolest feature, aside from the paint job, would be the part to get screwed up.
So it started with the initial order. I shoulda known. I ordered it from 1tail.com and they called to tell me that they didn't have any more black ones left, nor unpainted ones, only red ones. So I asked if the lights were easy enough to remove so I could sand it down, repaint it, and install the lights again. I believe my exact words were, "The lights aren't glued in are they? are they easy enough to just pop right out?"
After a brief hold while they went and checked, I was told that they were easy enough to pop out and were not glued in.
I got the undertail in yesterday. I opened up the package like a 5 year old at Christmas. the clouds parted, a ray of sunlight shown down upon me, trumpets sounded and angels sang. It was beautiful.
Queue record scratch.
What? the lights are all hot glued in. damnit. So alright, no big deal, right, minor set back, I'll just gently heat it with a heat gun and melt the glue and slide the LED's out. If anyone reading this has ever tried this you are probably laughing your ass off right now.
So I start on it right away, I grab the heat gun and I start heating it up. The glue starts to turn clear and I am able to slide the LED's out. They are gooey and I'm wondering how the hell I'm gonna get the glue off of the LED's without trashing the LED string. Then the worst thing happens. Right before my eyes the plastic of the tail starts to buckle and curl. I watch in horror and try to hold it in place but its no use its curling. My heart sinks. Im thinking, " Fucking great, I just fucked up $209 in a matter of 5 minutes."
So now, it looks like that after reheating it a few times and trying to push it back into shape. I'm ready to throw it through the shop wall and suck up the fact that I'm gonna have to spend another 2 bills..totally pissed. Then my Dad talks me into messing with it as much as possible, which I agree to since its already screwed, might as well try, huh? So after about 2 hours of heating and pushing, and my Dad actually widdling out a mold out of a block of wood, we get it back to about 90% of the way its supposed to look. And...I think...what I'm hoping... is that when its painted flat and the lights are back in, you won't even be able to tell unless you have read this, of course and already know to look for it.
It was a long frustrating night of trying to get back to where I started. I ended up cutting out the other lights by taking and exacto blade and slicing the glue and then pulling the lights out and then shaving the remaining glue off of the plastic pieces.
Now, back to that gunked up LED string. It now had this hot glue melted all over it. which looked like shit and I'm sure would have made the light look really weird.
Here's where I made another mistake.. well several actually.
1. I did not test the lights before I started messing with it. If you do this, test them right away to make sure they even work.
2. attempting to remove the lights with heat (obviously we went over that already)
3. next I tried to heat the LED's to see if I could melt off the glue gunked on. No Luck, heating wiping, heating wiping over and over again, nothing.
Next I tried rubbing it, as if to polish it on a piece of cloth which seemed to start to polish off the glue gunk. That's when my dad brought out the fine scrub pad, like a scotch pad, only finer. And I rubbed in on that and that seemed ot be working. So he shows me a rougher one, like a real scotch pad. And that's where the next mistake happens.
4. why go to a rougher pad when the finer grit one was working just fine? I have no idea. frustration build up and patience deficit were acting against me. So I use the green scotch pad and proceed to scratch the bulbs DULL! UGH! are you fucking kidding me? So I start to polish them with the finer grit pad and the cloth again to see if I could buff it out. yeah, there's no buffing out LED's. when they're done, they're done.
So at this point I decide to see if the dull surface even matters? maybe you won't be able to see that when its lit anyway. So I test it, the dull strip has a section of 4 of the bulbs in the middle of 12 that do not work. So at some point, either the buffing, the heating or the pulling it out (or possibly from the beginning) this was shot anyway. Had I tested them first I would have known.
So now, I have to order another string of LED's OR possibly 2 new strings if I can't get a matching one, I will likely have to buy 2 of them so the intensity matches.
So here's how the tail section looked by the end of the night.
The very edge of it that you can mostly see rippled will actually be under the other layer and not seen. And the gunk of course is sanded off now. So hopefully this will work.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
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