So we started welding the 1/4's back on the 70 this weekend. The cut on the old one was made at the outside edge of the door jamb, at the bottom seam on top of the rocker, around the inside of the wheel well, at the bottom underside of the rear 1/4 and then up the back seam behind the bumber and down along the body line back to the door jamb.

The welding went fine, everything went back on straight with no warps. Takes a LONG time to make all those little beads!

I ground down the weldds over the next couple of hours, but I find that the long body line is extremely difficulot to get straight and re-create. The edge is comng along fairly well, but it's wavy, the weld is high in some points and low in others and I can see this becoming a LONG process of doing one little inch a day...

Is there an easier process of recreating this body line evenly? I can do decent body work and have done the fenders and doors nicely, but I haven't had to "recreate" body lines like thisw and so far, it ain't fun!

HELP!

Curt, if that body line was untouched and you are below it an inch or two this should be pretty easy.

There are a few ways to do it, I use a file. Run a file on the line to spot the high and low points. If these high spots you mention are higher than the surrounding area, tap them down. You may find that they are level and the area next to it is actually too low.

All you need to do is IDENTIFY these high and low spots and then tap them down or lift them up if it is a low spot. Once you are close you will spread some plastic filler out over it and sand it smooth.

“Basics of Basics” Plastic filler
By Brian Martin

What ever tools you use the trick is to not add the last "skim coat' till you KNOW that it is all you need. Don't try to block out that first coat, just use it as a base for the LAST skim coat.

I was taught this procedure after doing bodywork for a number of years and it really works well:

Just apply a nice coat of filler (what ever brand, whatever style, we will put that aside right now). Cut that coat NOT to make it perfect, but to get the basic shape and filling you need as a base for the skim coat. You can cut it with 36 40 or 80 depending on how big the area you are working is. In other words, if you can cut it fast with only 80 then do it. But I would say that this would be limited to an application that is no larger than about 8 inches.

If you happen to have a few high spots, see if you can tap them down.
If you have a few low spots add a bit more filler to ONLY those spots.

Re-cut these last low spots you have just filled with the same grit you have been using (most likely 36).

If you now have a surface that ONE skim coat will fill, then apply it. If you don't work with it a bit more, but NEVER add a little here or there and think you will finish it without a skim coat.

If you have a surface that is very close with only a few VERY MINOR low spots like poor feathering onto the metal, poor transitions from one application of filler to another, or from the metal that is "poking" up here and there you can do the LAST skim coat.

This skim coat is very important, you want it to extend over the COMPLETE area, this is well past the damage you have been working. Maybe as much as 3 inches past the plastic that you have applied to "rough" it out.

This skim coat can be regular filler or a polyester glaze like "Icing" or "Polyester glazing putty", that is your choice, I use both depending on the size of the area being worked. Do not use anything that doesn’t mix with a hardener. NO, “Spot putty” in a tube, only polyester putties or fillers. If it uses a hardener, it cures to a hard film. The “spot putties” stay soft and can become even softer when the solvent from the primer coats it.

You now run a block, long board, or hog even over this skim coat with a little bit coarser paper than you plan on finishing with to cut off the resin that has surfaced in the filler. I usually just use the 36 or 40 or whatever I have been on the "rough" work. BUT take CAUTION not to cut much off, you want to JUST take the very top, don't really sand AT ALL.

Now finish sanding with your longboard or block or hog or whatever using the finer paper like 80 on a large area or 120 on that small 8" sized area. Block it out to perfection with a nice feather edge to the surrounding metal.

I can't stress enough, the trick is to know when just ONE LAST skim coat will do the job. And apply it COMPLETELY over the surface. If you only one little low spot in the middle, DON'T just do it, skim the ENTIRE thing. You HAVE to have one LAST skim coat over the ENTIRE thing every time. If you get in the habit of this you will do it over and over on every dent you repair and find that you can do just about any dent with just
two applications.

As you sand the filler let the board or block you are using run over the surrounding metal. If you only work on the filler you will sand it too low. You need to keep it as high as the surrounding metal, so use the metal as sort of a straight edge that you run the block or board off of.

Don’t worry if you cut through this skim coat here and there. In fact, you WILL most likely cut through. The point of that "LAST SKIM COAT" is that after you add it, you don't add ANY MORE filler. That "LAST SKIM COAT" is just that the LAST filler you add. If you hit a little filler below, or metal, that is normal and fine. The only thing you are looking for at that point is if the panel is FLAT. The filler skim coat is serving no other purpose than to finish you filler work, it is not a "sealer" or anything like that.

You can add fiberglass resin (“A” coat if you have a choice) adding the resin was exactly how I learned from the great Emery Robinson (my personal hero in the auto body world). But remember there was no products like polyester putties back then. When you add resin, that resin comes to the top of the film of filler. It is then something you have to deal with. The whole purpose of the SKIM COAT is to put a layer of filler over the top that is easy to block out with as little effort as possible. You want to be able to concentrate on making the panel FLAT not fighting with gummy resin, sand scratches and the like.

So the polyester putty though expensive is what I use.

How is this for an idea, a co-worker of mine showed me this very obvious tip. smile.gif

Add pour-able polyester putty to the regular filler! What an idea! LOL A little pour-able squirted into the "bondo" really thins it out nicely.

The "LAST SKIM COAT" should be left to cure a good long time. Where you may jump on filler and sand it as soon as it is hard, the skim coat should be GOOD AND CURED for an hour or more. If you can of course, in the production shop you may not be able to wait that long. The benefits of the procedure will not be diminished.

A little added note, I have found that I don’t use 36 or 40 grit at all anymore. I went to work at a shop that didn’t use the coarser grits so I had to learn not to also. I have found that using just the 80 and then finishing the Skim coat in 120 or 180 works great, even on large panels.

At this shop it was the first time that I wasn’t doing my own primer work. This meant that I couldn’t “cheat” with a lot of primer and blocking the body work “one more time”. I found that I had to get the work PERFECT, then give it to the painter. I did this in an interesting way, I look at the last skim coat as even a more “final” step. I now look it as “primer”. You see I have used polyester primer, which is like spraying “bondo”. They are both polyester resin based and act and sand very much the same. So, I figured why not just “spread out my primer” as the skim coat! It has worked GREAT, the painter jokingly says, “do you think I’ll need to prime this or just paint it?” I tell him, “Just clear it, it’s a shame to hide that work under primer”.

This method has worked great for me, it’s more of a state of mind than a procedure.

And don’t be afraid to buy the best sand paper and use a lot of it, the cost of the paper will be nothing next to the time and muscles saved. Find the paint store in town that services the PROS the Body shops in town, that is were you will get the right stuff and the right info.

That was pretty good. But I would not mix glaze with filler.It does make it spread nicer. But sometimes u will get pin holes. Since the the glaze drys faster.

Bodyman, did you know that Evercoat even has tech sheets that talk about mixing regular filler and the glaze products together.

If you are having problems making your line straight use some 3/4" masking tape.
Run your tape right on the line.
This will prevent you from sanding up above your body line.
I use the tape method ALL the time when doing body lines.

Bodyman, as Eric said, it is right there in tech sheets. All the "MetalWerks" system products can be mixed. Metal-2-Metal and RAGE and Glaze coat, and many others can be mixed.

I mix them all the time, works great. Pin holes are usually caused by not pressing when you apply. In other words trying to fill too much. I use Glaze coat or Metal Glaze as a skim coat every single job and will get a pin hole now and then. But if I don't try to push it, ONLY a skim coat, I will get zero pin holes.

Thanks Brian - this is pretty much the process we followed, having memorized your filler bible awhile back (!)

Problem is, the cut was made right ON the body line. For some reason, this made sense when we did the one cut. In retrospect, I don't think we're going to do the other one this way!

I ground the bodyline welds down and they're close - but trying to make them perfectly straight is a son-of-a-gun! Maybe using a file on the welds will help - I used an angle grinder to take down the rough welds...

If you use something like this on the bare metal it will show you the highs and lows.
http://www.eastwoodco.com/shopping/product/detailmain.jsp?itemID=1597&itemType=PRODUCT&RS=1&keyword=body+file
Its a file with a rough cut.
A really cool trick with this is to FIRST use a sharpie marker and go over the metal with the marker. Use the oversize marker its about 1/2" wide tip. Anyway when you run that file over the metal the file will remove the marker in the high spots and leave the marker in the low spots.
It takes any guess work out of figuring your high/low spots, as the highs will be shiny metal the lows will be black from the sharpie.

So all this makes perfect sense, and if it was a flat part of the panel, like below the body line it'd be easy, but I'm trying to essentially recreate the body line since that's precisely where the panel is welded together.

I see we made the cut in exactly the WRONG place, and it's obvious now, but at the time, a straight line, a straight weld, grind it even... yeah... it SEEMED like a good plan...! Unfortunately, trying to grind the line back straight is resulting in a long wavy line rather than the slow smooth curve it was before.

I took a long piece of masking tape and reset the line with it, then put a moderate coat of filler against the top edge of the tape and slightly over it. Waited until the filler was just starting to set and pulled it off gently. I now have a pretty good line, but I'm concerned that anything more than paper thick filler is going to chip if it gets door-dinged or anything...

I'll put a second line down under it too, and see if I can smooth it down and keep it straight with a 17" board.

I'm worried though...

Sharpie . :cool: thanks...
With the 70's long curved top body line. and your seam/weld joint " the Body Line " :eek: . It's going to be an arduous task of Building the perfect body edge. graemlins/angry.gif

In the past I have made a body shape template from poster board from the GOOD side as a Gide.

hmmm did not know about the tech sheets. We stop useing evercoat.I never said u could not do it.I Just was giveing a little pointer. I have done it before I have got pin holes from doing it. I know mixing it wrong (folding it over letting to much air getting traped) will cause them to. The biggest resson i don't like mixing them it seems to me like it gets to hard to sand. And i like to cut my filler down before it dries all the way.Than glaze. But everone has there own way of doing things. So I learned something new today.

I suppose the only thing to do now is go back and make a template as Wayne suggested.

Dang! This was a no-brainer in retrospect...
graemlins/clonk.gif :(

Another bail out option. Depending on how bad the top edge comes out.. I am assuming your dealing with not only high and lows, but a problem developing a straight crisp curved body lines , that IS wavy also.
If thats not the case that's GREAT. but a repo full 1/4 quarter will for sure solve your problem....IF IT IS...

Yeah, except what we just put on was a repop 1/4.

Mo' money...mo' time... UGH!

Yes but we they the FULL repo 1/4's ? or 1/4 skins... full 1/4 you would have t have cut off the material over the body Line into the trunk area... same up to the full sail panel seam and full inside the door opening.. ?