I've seen everything from using a drill press with wooden sticks & cut-off Auger bits to reach the slim places and cut-off carriage bolts pressed down on plywood. Thanks so much for your time and expertise, we need to get this done and if yove had any success personally with any of these or other various effective methods especially with simple tools, It'd really be helpful. Thanks so much and all the best. Abz
Make a punch out of aluminum for the high spot and use your vice anvil if it has one or bench , you need something out steel to strike against, aluminum is forgiving yet strong enough to do the job with out distorting the stainless, use layout bluing dye .guide coat paint or aerosol primer to monitor progress its going to take a lot of finessing and patience once you're at about 90% you can wet sand the rest. a fine file can be used but be careful the trim is thin ,
I straightened the side spears on the '53 Chevy in my avatar. Sometimes you have to work out the creases and dents first, then smoosh the edges back together to get the width and curve right. In my case I used channel pliers with duct tape over the teeth. Otherwise, Blade58's method sounds fine but maybe overkill. I used hard wood and body hammers. Wood keeps from stretching the metal. You can file and sand out minor imperfections once you have it close to correct. As long as you don't file all the way through the metal it will buff right up when you're done. Honestly I was surprised at how well most of it repaired but every single piece on the car had at least one good ding and I couldn't afford to replace most of it at the time.
A hardwood dowel with a rounded-off end is good for getting the big dents out. I got some old screwdrivers, removed the shafts from the handles, and ground the blades round and smooth. I back the stuff with a thick pad of rubber, when knocking out dents. Invest in an an old bench grinder with 2 polishing wheels, (a calico buff, and a stitched rag wheel) and a couple of grades of polishing compound, and you can do most anything in stainless.
I'm a jeweler and have fix a lot of stainless over the years, when I started in this business in 1976, it was very common for people to take they're trim to the jeweler for repair and that's when I learned to do it.
Pprobably, you need to find a professional, but most can't do it at the store they work at. I do it at my house.
Loboymusic, your description sounds just like a post I did on the subject a few years ago for tech week. I am sure the original post is toast due to Photobucket eliminating all the pictures. My experience with straightening stainless is to go the drill press method. (Motor turned off) using a variety of pushing tools both oak and steel against soft and hard surfaces. I also made a die with bondo of a non-dented portion of my molding creating a very accurate method of holding the odd shaped part in relation to where you want to push. My experience with the peck peck method of body hammers and chisels results in small dimples on the “good” side of your dents. Keep shopping for a better molding, and in the meantime try and fix the old one. What do you have to loose?
The Jalopy Journal
