After 13 months of work, I was able to start painting the front fenders. First, I had to set up my in-garage painting tent, since outside there are leaves all over the place. The last time I had used the tent was about a year ago, when I painted my other car, the Triumph Spitfire. Then I added some bits of threaded rod and random scrap metal to my fender jig, so that the fenders would be held in place several inches above it. This made it possible to reach the entire bottom surface with the spray gun.
I started with the freshly-sandblasted driver’s side fender. First it got a couple of coats of epoxy primer. Then I applied several coats of sprayable polyester filler to the top, where there were remnants of the dents and scratches that I had mostly worked out, and to parts of the bottom, where there was some rust pitting.
The other fender was a new reproduction which was almost dent-free, but it had gotten some patches of light surface rust during the year I had been working on it. I cleaned and degreased it very thoroughly, sanded it all over to get rid of the rust and make a better surface for the paint, and finally applied a phosphoric acid treatment. Once it was dry, it got a couple of coats of epoxy primer, followed by a few coats of filler-surfacer on the top.
I finished all of this on what will probably be the last reasonably warm week of the year. The finders are now hung up on my garage wall for the winter. Next spring, the repro fender will just need to be block-sanded before getting its finish coat. The old fender will need a bit more work: the polyester filler on the top and bottom will need a lot of sanding, and the top will need a couple of coats of the filler-surfacer, followed by block-sanding.