The door skin hammer you bought works great, I love the homemade dolley you made to back it up. The dolley work is important as the hammer. Good craftsmanship I appreciate all the skill it took to make the panels and inner structure. I did the same thing on a pair of 39 Mercury convertible doors, inner structure and lower skin. Frank
Thank you again for sharing your processes & well thought out rebuild of your car. It will be a beauty when it is done.
Quick update: I completed the door repair. I replaced the missing inner flange of the door skin after neutralizing the rust on the inside of the skin. I did it in 8" sections because they are not completely straight and this makes it much easier to fit. Everything is welded solid and ground. The two corners were patched as well after the pic was taken. I ran out of battery in my phone so there is only one pic. I also stripped the inside of the door and the jambs using paint stripper and wire brushes and wheels, followed by a light Ospho treatment. Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
I revisited the dustless blasting issue and I came to the conclusion that it is not worth the trouble for the body. I will strip it manually, probably with paint stripper and with mechanical means. It should be possible in a day to strip what remains on the body. Most of the hard areas are done. The heavily rusted inner fender wells will get some Ospho and POR15 treatment to stabilize any rust in the pits. I still plan on giving the fenders and hood to the dustless blaster. I'm glad I didn't rush into this before hearing everybody out! Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Both doors are stripped on the inside and are ready for POR15 on the inside of the door skin and structure, and primer everywhere else. Using aircraft stripper and wire wheels on the angle grinder made this a fairly easy job. Harbor Freight has a great selection of wire wheels for cheap. Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Doors stripped down to bare metal using aircraft stripper. I'm using plastic sheeting to extend the working time of the stripper due to the heat. Still took 3 applications to get down to bare metal. Some light surface rust was easily removed by my nifty new contour sander. Followed up with 80 grit on the DA. Immediate primering is a must in this humidity. Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Good job Swissy!! Terrific idea with clear plastic wrap. 93 in Orlando today, most likely same temp n humidity level down at your place. That tool works great! We have a similar one at work for erasing all the stickers off cop cars. has different attachments also.
Eastwood had the sander on sale with free shipping two weeks ago, decided to buy one until I found out that they wanted almost $60 for one of the black stripper drums. So I made a point not buying it... until a week later when I had calmed down and it was no longer on sale Sent from my iPhone using H.A.M.B.
I have read this build post up to here. It meets with my approval. Out of a possible five stars I give it five gold ones with a platinum cluster. Excellence is appreciated even by us car bums. I will be checking in from time to time. Your ability to communicate the variables as you are confronted with them and nuanced explanations make your metal working skills appear less magical than they actually are. I know a master level craftsman when I see his work. Everyone who has been amazed has good reason to be. As has been stated before, keep up the good work.
Fortynut - thank you very much for the nice comment! Anyway, as I said earlier, I decided to strip the body manually and this was the weekend to do it. I started by cutting off the drip rails as the passenger side was almost rotted off anyway. I used aircraft stripper followed by wire brush, wire wheel on the electric grinder, and final clean up with my new Eastwood contour sander to remove the surface rust. The trunk gutter is rusted out in a few spots so this will need to be replaced. I'll put it on the list.... After not being successful at grinding away the rust from the fender well, I sandblasted the area and got almost everything out. I used the black diamond 20/40 grit media and a siphon cheapo gun. It's a pain in the butt because in this humidity the coalescing dryer can't keep up and the fine media residue clogs up the gun after a minute or so. I applied some Ospho on the blasted area and will use POR 15 to permanently seal any residual rust in the pores where the coarse grit didn't reach. There are two areas where the rear belt line trim ends, where there is heavy pitting and I want to weld in some new metal. Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Took the day off and got a chance to patch the last few rusted areas on the body. There was rust through where the trim ends on both sides. One side was actually just badly pitted so I put in a small patch as well. Other side Moving on the the wheel well. The blasting uncovered a few holes where the body is braced on the inside. Pretty trivial, really.... Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
On to the trunk gutter. This is something new and I tossed around a few idea how to tackle it. The problem is that the gutter is curved in both planes and it is hard to weld in place or finish if it is fully shaped as a u-channel before it is welded in place. Here is what I'm working with... I am not trying to replace the whole piece at once, but break it down in 4 sections to make it more manageable. First, cutting out the rotted section. The spot welds are on the bottom and are visible from the underside after running the grinder over the metal. I'm just using the cut off wheel to grind through from the inside of the channel and peel it back like opening a tuna can. A little clean up and Ospho treatment will take care of this Before I started I cut out a small section to make a template I used masking tape and pen lines at the middle of the corners get the flat dimensions. With the tape on the outside, I know I probably have the dimension a little on the long side. I used the brake to make the first bend. Adjusting the plate of the brake about 1/8" away from the actual edge results in the rounded corner like the original. As predicted I had to shorten the 15mm dimension to 13.5 mm to be able to fit the piece. The catwalk moved up almost 1/8" in the middle when I cut the gutter out. I'm glad I only did a short section. "Aim small, miss small!" I used the contour gage to compare the profile has not changed by comparing both sides. What I don't show is that I used the pneumatic punch to make new holes for the plug welds in the inner structure about 2" apart, then welded the new angle piece in place from the bottom. Working with an angle piece let's me adjust the curvature in both planes at will by using the shrinker and stretcher. This would not have been possible if I had shaped the channel into its finished u-shape! Here is the angle piece welded in place The idea is to use the square 1/2" tube as a backer and hammer the edge over until vertical. But first I will replace the entire length of gutter. That's all folks! Will be out of town for a couple of days, so please bear with me. Sent from my iPhone using H.A.M.B.
Great work on the trunk gutter. Thanks for showing us how you break it down into manageable step and explaining why.
Just read the whole thing in two days, great inspiration to get moving on my '40 Ford coupe that has similar issues. With the recent changes at Photobucket the pics on the first few pages do not show. Any chance we could get a "Before and Current" photo comparison?
WTF Photobucket! They want $72 for the cheapest account now. Not going to do that. Fortunately I switched to using the HaMB app after page 4 of the thread. Sent from my iPhone using H.A.M.B.
I bent a few short sections and made a square connector piece to align the individual sections. Bending the tube to confirm over a longer length is tedious and does not work well because a square tube only bends parallel to the sides, but the flange is angled in relation to the curvature. I used a dolly to slowly bend the edge. It has to be a gradual transition else the metal will be stretched. Repositioning of the clamps is required to get to all spots. Last step was to scribe the final height of the lip and grind off excess. Really happy how this turned out. Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
A trick which made the job easier was to cut the square tubing every inch or two and leave only one surface intact as shown in the picture above with the connector piece. It lets the tubing conform to the curvature without pre-bending or forcing the underlying metal. Sent from my iPhone using H.A.M.B.
I decided to replace a 10" section on the driver side where there was heavy surface rust. Shaping the new piece with the correct curvature. Making a template to determine how much to remove Marking the metal using the template All done! Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
The lower right corner looked a little crusty and I decided to cut the whole thing out, which in the end was not really necessary because the rust was limited to the outer skin where the spot welds are. The inner structure was reused but needed a corner replaced from cutting out. I had replaced the lower corner of the body earlier, but it still needs some final tweaking. The reverse curve is somewhat tricky to figure out.. Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Been away on vacation in beautiful British Columbia... I apologize for being OT Anyway, I had a couple of days to get the body stripped back to bare after leaving it in Ospho. I really should have wiped it off immediately after applying. Would have saved me some work. I used the wire wheel, Eastwood surface conditioner, DA and hand sanding. I also spent a couple of hours sandblasting the rust pits. The wheel wells were kind of porous in the surface after bead blasting and I decided to apply POR 15 surface prep (similar to Ospho) and and the rust encapsulator to seal the surface. Before POR15... Ready for DTM primer. Dirty business... Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
The Jalopy Journal
