Hello from Seattle!
 

Hi! My name is Anton and I'm a beginner in metal shaping. By trade I'm a machinist, which has greatly aided my restoration of a '51 Chevy dump truck. So far I've shortened the frame and driveshafts on the truck. The dump hydraulics are set aside and I'm rebuilding the bed frame. For the last month or 2 I have been trying to work out some of the dents in the body, but it's slow going; I'm not confident that I'm doing it correctly at all! So, I'm here to learn about sheet metal, because there's no way that I can pay to have it done and there's no way in hell that I'm going to pay to have bondo cover up the damage.

Anton, welcome and thanks for the introduction. Lots of information to help you with metal shaping. Hope you find the site helpful. Thanks for joining us.

Hi and welcome Anton!:)

Welcome to the site Anton

Peter.

Hello Anton, welcome to allmetalshaping. To removed dents from a panel you need to go easy with to metal so you do not cause more damage by stretching the metal. As a rule of thumb you try to remove the dent in the reverse order to that which caused it. So the point of impact would have been the first damage and the outer ring of damage would be secondary damage. this is more obvious on large dents but applies to all dents. Generally you would bump out some of the damage with a dolly from the inside, take note of the shape of the dolly, it should match the panel being worked on as closely as possible. The dolly can also be held in a lower point of the dent while a flipper (slapper) is used to persuade the higher spots down and the lower spots up, working aroung the perimeter of the damage. If you get this process right sometimes even quite large dents will just pop out and leave little damage to metal finish. I show a little metal finishing on my youtube footage.

I hope this helps.

I have a sister and brother who live in Seattle btw.

David