Traction Control

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Post-prime and pre-slime.

I had just finished priming the white trim before applying Bondo(tm) polyester resin. I'm happy with how painting a tiny bit of the copper roof turned out; it restored the proportions of the entrance gable.
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Bondo!

100% waterproof! No shrinking! 15 minutes working time! Ready to paint in 2 hours! Thin with lacquer thinner!
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Bondo thinned

It looked a bit thick to roll, so I thinned it with lacquer thinner. Big mistake.
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Roll-on

The thinned resin was easy to roll on, and eventually I got the hang of distributing the walnut shells evenly.
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Steps

The steps were a lot more porous than the deck so they soaked up a lot more resin. I figured this would just waterproof them better but it didn't work out that way because the resin didn't harden.
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Finished steps

So far so good. What I didn't realize is that the resin was thinned so much that it wouldn't cure correctly.
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Crushed walnut shells

I bought the walnut shells (20-30 grit) at an industrial abrasives retailer. Apparently they are an acceptable material for cleaning delicate parts such as jet engines, where embedded bits of SiC would cause real problems.
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Shells closeup.

These are english walnut shells, not the black walnut shells I was looking for. But they are fine.
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Final texture.

Final texture of walnut shell on steps.