Herculiner?

Once she finished the seams I wanted to coat the underside of the body to seal it, smooth(?) it over a bit and reduce the number of fibreglass slivers that I got in my hands every time I pushed the body in or out of the garage.

What to use?

HERCULINER! It's a DIY truck bed coating. I've used it in a Jeep before and it works very well. It has ground up rubber bits in it for traction (not really important on the underside of a fibreglass body) and is tough as nails.

I laid a tarp in the yard and we pushed the body buck outside. We removed the body from it, flipped it upside down and set it on the tarp. Then I went back into the garage and laid out an old carpet. On top of the carpet went two blankets, and then I used some of the FFR shipping paper over that. Overall I had close to an inch of padding. I repositioned the body brace and we carried it into the garage.



Since I hadn't done the cutting and bodywork on the edges yet, I taped them off so they didn't get coated.



Then I got to work. Notice the gloves and old clothes. Herculiner is wondrous stuff but the only way to remove it is with Xylene before it dries. After it dries it doesn't come off. Having read horror stories of this in the past I was extra careful.



Here's an in-progress shot so show how it looks.



I did two coats on the whole body with an extra two in each wheelwell to reduce the probability of rock 'pings' showing in the paint later.

After it was dry I removed the tape and we flipped it back over and put it back on the body buck.

Of course, this was prior to me cutting all of the holes in the body so it now adds an extra challenge to do that. This is just another instance of me doing the right thing at the wrong time.

Oh well...