Pottering

Over the pst few months, I have still been working on parts of the mini. Through the summer the roof, front wings and rear valance have been cleaned up smoothed and primed. The priming went fairly well for being in a gazebo with sides, until the last session when the gazebo went for a wonder down the road. There was no damage to the mini but the gazebo took a pounding.
Here is the roof before priming.

Oh, looks like I did the rear pillars as well :)
Due to a fortunate turn of events I ended up with a 3m x 2m "shed" more like a small single garage. So after I finished building the kids a summer house I managed to clear a space and get the new shed up. After a few weeks the new shed had shelves, racks and a mini in it, all ready for winter.
With the mini's boot hard against the rear of the shed it was finally time to attack the front valance under seal. Which much to my joy came off quite quickly, followed by a blast with the grinder and the weird paint removing disc. The whole front end is back to bare metal ... ok there was a "few" corners to do by hand/2-3 hours of corners and lips.
Having done a bit more pondering on the overall look of the front end I went off to the scrap yard to pick up a few goodies. I came away with 2 ford focus side indercators orange and 1 clear, 4 side indicator plugs, a glove box handle from a MG 45 maybe? 2 glove box lights with switches and a tray that goes in the din2 stereo slot, finally 2 mini one air vents.
The front indicators are going to be the ford focus triangular ones, 2 or 4 is still to be decided but either way a metal plate is going over the old indicator hole.
Templates have been made and tested to ease the sharp lower edge for the left and right vents in the front valance, with the aim to create a subtle curve accross the bottom edge of these 3 vents but keeping the beveled lead into the opening. Hoping to shape the metal for that this week. Talking of metal work I think its time for the hammer and dolly to come out again as the engine bay cross rail could do with a little work, and the front valance after closer inspection seems to be floored from the factory so it will prob get a little tickle with the hammer to sharpen up some lines.