By the way, I wouldn't suggest anybody put mud over paint. I was just telling you what we did to keep old junk on the road. Another occasion, I did see a body man bump a qtr panel on a Monkey Carlo. After he bumped it out, he ruffed it up with 36 and went to spreading mud. I asked,"Shouldn't ya grind yer paint off first?" He replied,"Ever see bondo not stick to anything?" That silver lacquer turned out nice. But I also never saw it again. Maybe not so good a yr or so later.
Most do it by eyeballing. A general rule of thumb is if you have a puddle of filler that is roughly 2" in diameter and has pretty much levelled itself out you should run a ribbon of hardener from the middle out to the edge, if it is 4" in diameter from one edge to the other. The other thing that should be avoided is mixing filler on cardboard as the cardboard will absorb components of the filler/hardener and change the mixing properties. A metal/plastic mixing board or an onion style mixing board should be used.
it does come in tubes with a special mixing gun been out for 5 or 6 years now. When you need to thin filler you should use a wax free resin . Also the cable grinder I mentioned was a large 1 H.P. Motor with a 10 FT. Length cable about 3/4 in diameter and the switch was on the motor, kind of scared in today's world
Unless you pop rivet chicken wire on first!-- Sign in my buddy's shop: "Metalwork is not Plastic Surgery"
So, because I'm using an embarrassing amount of putty, I feel that I'm getting close to being an expert on this! Also, I knew i did my driver door way wrong, so I cut out a bunch of the filler and found it to be 1/2 inch deep . So anyways, I lack a ton of the tools and time and money to do my metal work "Right", but hey, its just an old rambler! So my shoe string skim coat method uses the "cheap" off the shelf bondo brand bondo. I saw on the bondo web site that you can mix fiberglass resin in with the filler to make it more pourable. This is an excellent way of doing this folks! The best way cheap way I found to do my skim coats: is to take a bowl, old box, but not a mixing board, it runs off if you mix to much. Then, mix fiberglass resin in with the bondo about 1:5 to 1:10 respectively. I usually experiment until its a bit thicker than a pudding consistency. Then I add the red cream hardener, just enough to get all of the filler tinted red. It may not be a correct assumption, but I think as long as you cant see any grey anymore, it will eventually cure. Also, its thin enough if you spread a bit of grey stuff on the panel, you can spread the grey around on the panel to get the activator mixed in. Then I take my spreader, you want to be semi fast now that its all activated. I start spreading the filler all over the panel I want skim coated. Don't worry about getting it spread too even here, you are racing against the clock. Then once I have gotten all the filler on the work piece, I take a long flat blade (Old yard sticks work good, I like to use new aluminum channel from Lowes, because its really straight and if you clean it up good, you can re use it) and drag it up the door, pressing down as I do it. You will end up scraping most of it off if the panel is straight enough. Then I take the spreader and scrape the extra off of my blade and spread it onto the low spots. You will feel the filler start to What i call "Clay UP" >Remains spreadable, but creates a ton of pin holes and drag marks. Unless you have a really big problem, it's time to stop. Continuing to try and spread will just make a bigger mess. You will have to wait at least an hour to continue sanding, and probably over night. I have clogged up so many sanding discs its not funny. But if you do this right and wait for it to cure, you will save yourself a lot of time and sand paper. If you want to rough down some really bad peaks, I suggest using a long dry wall rasp within an hour of it setting up. I suggest you try this method on a scrap piece if you have the stuff laying around, It works like a charm! Hopefully in a year from now, I can post how it holds up sitting outside!
Chances are you won't be. You have just listed pretty much every conceivable do not do when it comes to using body filler that there is. Methods like this are exactly why fillers get a bad rap.
They make a wax free resin to thin body filler, it's made by Bondo . If you use regular resin you get a waxy build up on the surface which clogs the paper. The wax floated to the top to provide a air seal for the plastic to harden ,there is the proper amount in the filler to do the job even after you thin it with wax free resin.
O man Dumore grinders. Look in the old little pages and 40s 50s hot rod magazines, they used Dumore grinders for porting. For the air brush, most likely they had a hose with valve stem fittings on both ends, you used a spare tire for an air pig. Have seen that before too, when air compressors were expensive even the little putt putts.
That is EXACTLY my thinking. When I decided to buy my first project, I didnt put much thought into. I bought a truck that had been primered, and the more I looked at it, the more scared of shitty work I became. I ended up finding a untouched body that had a lot of rust, but at least I wasnt re-doing what someone else had already half ass done. Now that the rust is fixed properly, If I ever decided to paint it, itll be done right.
I think it depends on the scope of the build a bit as well. As you can see from my pics above, this car has quite a bit more than normal. However, this was a 4 door inline 6 sedan that as a full restore would bring maybe 2500? I really wanted a 2 door, but they have gotten incredibly scarce in the last couple years. I have also learned a ton about body work on this old girl. I think I went into this project thinking "I will never be able to sell this once I start cutting". However, the same could be said for the car the way it was.
The Jalopy Journal
