Hot Rods English Wheel vs Fender

I've never used and english wheel only watched others on YouTube. I have a 34 fender with lots of very small dents in the headlight area. Would it be possible to roll them out using an english wheel with VERY little pressure on the anvils and 2 people moving the fender? I'm thinking this would be easier than using a hammer and dolly for hours or days.

 

No,I don't think so,hammer an dolly is best,some times you may also need a shinking disk to help/or heat an cool wet rag.

 

General rule... any time you have 2 hard surfaces (hammer and dolly, English wheel, etc...) you are stretching the material. If you have dents, the material is already stretched, and needs to be bumped back without additional material stretching.

Try a soft (plastic or wood) hammer with steel dolly, or a steel hammer with no dolly to bump back into general shape. Then follow up with a planishing slap hammer and dolly to blend the last bit

 

When doing a 2 man job on a Wheel both people need to be equally as talented and think exactly alike or you'll end up with krazzy Ziz Zag ridges all over the place. Personally I'd do the job Solo. Lumps and bumps mean using the Hammer and Dolly on both sides in multiple places.

 

The English wheel works great to roll out fenders if they clear the frame of the machine. I have done it many times. I hammer them out to get them close. Then like the op said no pressure on the wheels you can bump up low spots and push down high spots by pushing the panel into the bottom or top wheel. It takes practice. You can make a mess quick if you don't have the right lower wheel (also called anvil) and the sides of the wheel hit.

Planishing hammers are easier to use on fenders. They get right up to wire edges and you run the tool over the fender rather than the fender through the tool.

 

Back in the day there were smaller hand held E-wheels available and used for working out dents while the fender was on the car. I have seen some used for sale floating around at flea markets and on the 'net. Google "handheld English wheel for sale" for the spendy prices asked or maybe ideas on making a home built. Got any tool-a-holic buddies that might not know exactly what they might have in their collections?

Ed