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| This shot was taken in October, just before I moved the body into my cellar. Here it sits on a frame with shopping cart wheels, made for just this purpose (to be able to move the body around by myself). Here I've replaced the metal on the lower "butt" area, welding seams still visible. Yes, I'm going to omit the original taillamps (or what was left of them) in favor of 46 Cadillac lights. Here I have also cut off rusted areas of inner wheelwells. This gave me access to brush POR-15 onto all inner panels below rear quarter windows. A useful tip - I used a "barbeque brush" with a long handle - perfect for this purpose (the barbeque season is over anyway). |
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| Now this is the tough part for
an amateur panel beater like me! It's fairly easy to fabricate a single
curve panel, but a 1 mm cold rolled sheet doesn't turn into a compound
curve just by bending it in your hands. This is the lower leading
edge of rear fender. It took 4 hours for me to fabricate this panel
(from two pieces), and another 3 hours to make it fit in the fender...
Arter a more than fair amount of trial-and-errors, I found this method to work best: Place a piece of sheet on a sandbag (small piece, don't get greedy), and and WHACK IT HARD with a round head wooden or plastic mallet of at least 2.5" diameter. Don't care about the small dents and wrinkles, it's important to just get the metal stretch into 2 directions at the same time to end up with a compound curve. When you have the basic shape, you can perfect the shape and straighten out the surface using the regular hammer and dolly method. |