Work on the cherry is moving along. After being sandblasted and painted yellow, the cherry got a coat of green fairing compound, a finishing material similar to bondo.

According to Joe King:

Most of what we see on the surface of the cherry will be sanded off on Monday, leaving the compound only in areas that are slight depressions on the surface. At this point all of the sanding is done by hand with a sanding block, to avoid any tool marks or depressions made from having a power sander in the same location for too long. This is extremely labor intensive, but critical to make the surface pristine.

The stem is coated with the second coat of epoxy primer, gray, which is also under the fairing compound on the cherry. After sanding and filling, the entire work will be coated with another coat of the gray epoxy.

The hand-sanding process is expected to take around two weeks to complete and may not be the most picturesque. We’ll keep you posted with progress updates.

Joe King, Walker Associate Registrar, has been busy overseeing the refinishing process of the cherry. He sent me two pictures from Hugo, MN, where the cherry is being refinished.

Here, the cherry has been placed in a huge sandblasting chamber and the original surface has been carefully blasted away. The cherry appears gray due to the sand residue left on the surface.

In this shot, the cherry has been cleaned and received it’s first coat of epoxy-based primer.

The next step will be to be to get another coat of grey epoxy primer, followed by a green fairing compound (similar to bondo), followed by even more layers of primer, paint, and clear-coat. We’ll be sharing some more details as the process happens.