MP&C Shop Projects

MP&C · Jan 10, 2013

This thread, while it may show quite a bit of work on vehicles that come in the shop, is primarily going to focus on providing metalworking/metal shaping tutorials, where ever possible using simple hand tools, in hopes that it may inspire others to learn the craft. While I am no expert, in many cases learning as I go, feedback and suggestions from others is more than welcome. Where I strive to improve methods with each lessons learned, outside suggestion is often the source to provoke such thought and vision. Many times this "re-thinking the process" comes via someone questioning that process shown, so feel free to ask away!

I've been travelling quite a bit for the day job all this past fall, which has put a cramp in time available in the shop, but that has subsided a bit so now is as good a time as any to start a shop thread..

This is a customer car, the owner and I discussed shaving the fender seams quite a while back, and she asked about it again last week, so I guess we're on the hook..

The bolting plates are cut out of the way, and the folded flange is trimmed, leaving a bit of extra to allow for fine tuning the weld joint.

Bottom of the fender is cut loose from the bolting plate using the cutoff wheel. Then sanding the face of the fender leaves a contrast at the bend of the flange for a good guide for trimming with snips....

Planishing out the fold to fill the gap....

Clamps used to test fit. Still needs some fine tuning for zero gaps, but we'll finish that another day..

Steevo · Jan 10, 2013

Is that a 56?

MP&C · Jan 10, 2013

55 wagon

rumpity_z28 · Jan 10, 2013

very nice work im liking this thread

JC23 · Jan 10, 2013

Glad you took Ed's suggestion. Always enjoy yer stuff!

John in OH · Jan 11, 2013

So, I'm not a body guy ... can you provide a close-up pic of those clamps you are using?

MP&C · Jan 11, 2013

The second post or so in this thread show them close up...

http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=53534

Thanks for the comments guys!

JonBoehman · Jan 12, 2013

Cant wait to see more.

bczygan · Jan 12, 2013

You sir...are an artist. You could probably improve the Statue of Liberty!

...or build it from scratch.

MP&C · Jan 12, 2013

Thanks for the comments guys!

Got to trimming today, little to no gaps....

Used the new ER70S-7 wire. Looks to me like it lays out a bit flatter...

Used the crowned hammer to planish the welds. This stuff appears to planish out a bit easier as well.

After planishing, 1/16" wide cutoff wheel used perpendicular to the weld for grinding the welds with minimal contact patch and less heat buildup. Ground welds just proud of the metal surface, front and back, to make room for planishing the next set of weld dots. Then rather than weld the next dots in the middle, I overlapped each of the previous welds to help eliminate missed spots and pinholes. Weld, planish, grind, repeat.

Then I got on a roll and missed some in process pics, but here is the result after dressing out all the welds...

Back side....

Yeah, I like this much better....

e-tek · Jan 12, 2013

I can see this quickly becoming a forum favourite - it's already one of mine!

socapots · Jan 12, 2013

man your skill and attention to detail never ceases to amaze me.
i gotta learn from your threads. lol.

tinbender 66 · Jan 12, 2013

Great stuff!

lilscorpion · Jan 12, 2013

I'm impressed. Very clean work. How do you finish/seal the backside of the seam?

MP&C · Jan 12, 2013

Welds on the back side of the panels will get dressed just like the front side, and then sealed with epoxy primer.

dittle fart around · Jan 12, 2013

Can you stop by and work on my truck?

superdutymike27 · Jan 12, 2013

dittle fart around said:
Can you stop by and work on my truck?

I second that!!

MP&C · Jan 14, 2013

Haha! That would be a heck of a commute, either way!

About a month and a half ago a buddy of mine came over with a bumper filler panel off a 61 Starliner he's putting together as a 70th b-day present for his dad. He was using my media blast cabinet to clean off the paint and was planning on spraying some Krylon and reinstalling. Well, I had him strip the paint, I smoothed out some dings with the hammer and dolly, and here's how I finished it, using some of my Imron rather than his Krylon...

Well I stopped by to check it out after he installed it, and noticed the valve covers looked like someone had changed out the intake and dropped it a few times on the valve covers. So he dropped them off for some dent repair this evening...

All of these tools were used this evening at one point or another...

Dents were worked with various implements of destruction, filed to find the high spots, and low spots bumped up, then repeat.

As they will be painted, we'll leave off with the following.... Sandblasting and some H/K epoxy primer will take care of any remaining defects...

mdkingsley · Jan 14, 2013

Great metal working skills, subscribing.

don long · Jan 15, 2013

I like what I see
Nice work with a few special tools
I'm an old body man but never did the custom work
so I'm very interested in seeing how the metal guys do it

Thanks MP&C
Don

PS: I subscribed

nine4gmc · Jan 15, 2013

love it, in for more!

MP&C · Jan 16, 2013

Thanks for all the comments guys!

Had a few minutes this evening so I hung the fender on the car to have a better look-see...

NASTYZEN · Jan 16, 2013

Turned out well! As if you ever turn out some thing that isn't nice...
Keep em coming Robert.

bam55 · Jan 17, 2013

MP&C,

Have I told you I'm a fan of your work? If not now you know.lol You do great work buddy.

MP&C · Jan 29, 2013

Thanks Claude & Bam....you guys do some pretty damn nice work yourselves..

One more piece to finish up the shave, the inner flange for the grille opening needed connecting together after trimming the bolting flanges.

Trimmed and holes drilled for plug welds....

All welded and dressed out....

As tomorrow is supposed to warm up a bit, I'm going to try and spray some epoxy primer to get the valve covers ready for the gold paint. Here they are all sandblasted, hot tanked, and ready to go....

MP&C · Jan 30, 2013

Here's the official 2 x 8 valve cover paint fixtures...

A couple coats of H/K epoxy and a guide coat and we'll let it sit a couple days....

Kevin54 · Jan 30, 2013

That really cleaned up the looks of the fender. Just think how many out there have just bondo'ed the seam and sanded smooth. It's great to see a "real" metal finisher. Looking forward to seeing this thread grow!!! :thumbup:

MP&C · Feb 2, 2013

Thanks Kevin!

I was going to start the shave on the driver's side, but a few stumbling blocks along the way...

Mocked up all the front sheet metal just to see it together again.. Gotta love that hood bird..

Here's the factory seam to compare to the shaved version...

Bumper filler panel had been tweaked at some point in the past 50 years, so let's see what we can do to straighten it out some....

Used a combination of the flat and crowned body hammers, the donut dolly, the 5" dia shot bag, and a round hunk of steel.

Much better...

Next on the list before the next shave, a bit more rust to attend to...

Used a wide sweeping radius on the cut to minimize any extra shrinking that occurs inside tight corners.

To get a good, consistent profile on the patch, I used the go kart wheel...

Laying out the pattern..

One last test fit before tipping the flange...

Dumb mistake number one....don't cut the patch so small you can't get leverage to force the flange to tip...

Well, we do have a good crease to work from now. Some hammering on the 2" round anvil will work

Trimmed to fit...

Welded and dressed...

Hey...the light even fits

e-tek · Feb 3, 2013

More great metalwork! Can I suggest/ask that you show us some of the actual bumping/shaping process? It was great to see exactly which tools you used, but would also be cool to see how you did it - I for one would like to learn how someone with your skills would tackle it.

Also, where do you buy your bead rollers? I'm looking for some different shaping wheels.

Whenever I see your metal bench in the background I think of how mine was the same - until I decided to make some room on top!

MP&C · Feb 3, 2013

e-tek said:
Whenever I see your metal bench in the background I think of how mine was the same - until I decided to make some room on top!

Hey....... it gets cleaned up once a year, need it or not.... :lol_hitti

The wheels for the bead roller for the most part came with it, other than the skateboard wheels and radius roller I've added... see here

The last time I used the bead roller I made a dash insert for a Studebaker truck. It had a considerable roll added to it, which was much too tight a radius for using the go kart slick on the wheel.. This was done using the skateboard wheel and a 1/2" wide bead roller

But this seemed to leave pronounced creases from the beading die, and I wanted to replace this with one with a wider radius.

and a relief cut for the shaft nut...

A few passes with some 18 ga......

Outside has less noticeable marking.. Yeah, this should work!

With the metal bumping, a lot of times it is hard to show a tech thread on the subject because nothing is a hard and fast rule, and depending on how the panel reacts in some cases dictates a different method based on that result. But the donut dolly is discussed in pretty good detail here...

One of the guys over on the metal shaping web sites has a neat tool he sells called a donut dolly. It works more proficiently in off-dolly shrinking a crowned panel because it supports the bottom side in more than one spot (around the perimeter) as the panel is bumped from the top in the center of the donut dolly. This would seem to be useful in body repair, especially to address high spots found after blocking primer where heat would not be as feasible.

A few days ago, someone on another forum asked for advice in removing an outward roof dent. I suggested a low-buck alternative to the donut dolly, simply using a PVC pipe fitting. Where it may not work as aggressively as the donut dolly which has more mass, sometimes slower is better, especially when trying something new. I just today got around to trying this process in the shop, and rather than use the roof of something sitting here, we will use a piece of 18 ga CRS to simulate a roof.

Grid layout for the Wheeling Machine, and completed "sample" roof...

The first order of business should be to make some profile templates. In the case of an actual dented roof, use the opposite, undamaged side. This will allow you to check your progress as you go, and easily find the remaining high spots.

Using a crowned body hammer, a "dent" will be added from the back side, crossing both of our template areas.

With the dent added:

I chose to use a PVC elbow, it had two different sized ends for two tools in one. As with any body tool, they should be free of any burrs that may mar the metal surface. I also added a slight radius to the edges...

Holding the dolly against the bottom of the panel, you can see that due to the dents it only touches the panel at the red arrows. Based on off-dolly principle, the shrink would occur more prominently in the direction of the red arrows.

Here are the tools we will use today:

After some off-dolly bumping:

Check with the templates

Progress....these are light taps only with the hammer. We just want to bring down the high spots, not create craters.

Here's where I finished up...

I have a little over an hour in making the panel, denting, and removing the dent. Where I still could have gone a bit more, it was about to a point where high build primer should have masked any remaining imperfections. This dent removal could also have been accomplished with heat shrinking using an O/A torch, etc, but for those times where you may not wish to use heat and want another option, this seems to work well. I think with using the donut dolly and it's heftier mass, one could shave some additional time off the repair

e-tek · Feb 3, 2013

Great stuff - I know a lot of guys will get something out of it. Funny thing is, I was just debating a lathe purchase and thought: "what would I actually use one for?". Thanks for the answer!

Side note - I was watching Search & Restore this morning and was amazed at the amount of "bondo" they used. They more than "skim-coated" the entire thing and had 10 guys sanding it down. I've done a LOT of cars and several have won show awards and never have I coated an entire car in filller..... :willy_nil

Guess I'm not as 'experienced' as Tim Strange is. :dunno:

coronet · Feb 3, 2013

You are one talented indvidual,I wish I had that skill set.Are you self taught?

MP&C · Feb 3, 2013

Trial and error, books, videos, and online resources. About the only "official" class I've taken has been a TIG class at the local community college. Did I mention trial and error? :lol_hitti

NUTTSGT · Feb 3, 2013

The mad skillz and talents of the members here never cease to amaze me.

MP&C · Feb 3, 2013

e-tek said:
Side note - I was watching Search & Restore this morning and was amazed at the amount of "bondo" they used. They more than "skim-coated" the entire thing and had 10 guys sanding it down. I've done a LOT of cars and several have won show awards and never have I coated an entire car in filller..... Guess I'm not as 'experienced' as Tim Strange is.

As a possibility, perhaps the bondo manufacturer is a sponsor of the show :dunno:

I know my work isn't perfect, but I do try to get it to where a minimal amount of Evercoat 416 or high build will address any issues.

MP&C · Feb 4, 2013

Got a new purchase in the mail today, it came with what appears to be the original handle. Can't make out the writing on it, but I can see it there. It is a bit loose, so the new hickory S-O is slated for install once the hammer faces are polished up...

Also got started on wet sanding the Starliner valve covers....

....pay no attention to the flying pig...

NASTYZEN · Feb 4, 2013

You let the pig out of the box! Now we need to see more of it.
Nice hammer btw.

MP&C · Feb 4, 2013

Mother-in-law's yard art. She asked if I had a sandblast cabinet, told her to come over and I'd show her how to use it. I think she was under the impression it was automated. She dropped the pig off and left. I haven't had time for any "automation", so I think I may pick up some POR, it looks like a good candidate for it as is..

MP&C · Feb 4, 2013

OK Claude, here you go, one flying pig...

One valve cover wet sanded.....

....and started the prep for shaving fender number two.....

MP&C · Feb 8, 2013

Worked on cleaning up my "new" hammer this evening. Here it is right out of the box....

Note this face is a bit on the pitted side...

The handle was loose, and I did have some extras in the tool box, so we'll clean up the hammer faces first and then install the new hickory handle...

I used the DA and foam interface pad on the faces to keep from sanding in flat spots. The interface pad helps to conform to the surface, as seen here.....

Started with 320 grit and worked up to 3000 trizact

And with the new handle...

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