The roughness of the cubbies compared to the perfection of just everyone else’s boat troubled David.
I didn’t even notice it, because everything is always rough, isn’t it?
So a polite suggestion came in. The cubbies should be Bondo’d.
https://driving.ca/features/feature-story/bondo-repair-fails-that-are-too-funny-to-be-sad
I am a middle-aged Mexican, and I know what Bondo is. It is how we fixed dents in the barrio in my childhood.
In the glory days of the seventies, cars had a lot of metal as opposed to fiberglass or these slim metal panels that are easily removed and replaced. When the body shop — taller — fixed your car, they had to take off the entire side and get out a ball peen hammer and hammer the dent out. They were very good, those guys, and usually got it almost perfect, but for those tiny bits that could not be pounded out perfectly, they simply put this metal-working paste on that dried to a very hard finish and could be sanded perfectly smooth, painted, and, if done professionally, looked almost new.
Bondo.
A lot of people figured out that you could save a bundle of money by getting the bondo yourself and a spray can. It was how things were done in the barrio.
My old car had a dent for a while that I planned to bondo over then paint in the form of a car band aid. It would have been fun. Kind of like the boat that will eventually have a Viking snake on it.
But back to the trouble of the Bondo.
I went down to Lowe’s and got some vinyl bondo, and tried to work with it.
Yuck. It is a gelatinous mess and doesn’t really ever smooth out like the old Bondo.
The first port side cubby is sanded and just needs a few more washing downs, then it will be ready for the real Bondo, not the substitute called vinyl.
