Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2012 9:31 am
Jay, this thing has been a learning experience for me and I haven't tried to pretend to have much experience at any of this. In retrospect, I should have cut the pull pins off and ground them smooth instead of twisting them off, since they were so soildly on, or I could have fashioned some type of pry bar with a block of wood for leverage and pushed that dent and the two creases out. I find it much better to push rather than pull, to get a smoother finish and easier too. When access allows. As for pick and file, yes I agree about the proper idea of it, but the reality is usually different. Back in 1974 after reading about an instructor who taught the old ways of doing body work, I put my career on hold and drove my 55 chevy with 327 4 spd from Michigan to California and took one semester in auto body at Santa Monica city college.
It was just a big cloud of bondo dust there just like at all the body shops and nothing like what I had read about, but he did take time to show the class how to use lead --then said forget it--and because I asked, he showed me a little about metal finishing. The instructor was in his sixtys and had obviously been around a long time, so after showing the general idea of pick and file, he filed it smooth, so I practiced that on a 56 Ford that I picked up for my brother and kept filing it smooth. I did what my instructor told me to do, he just didn't have time to check up on me often enough. There were no bulls eye picks back then it was just the pick end of a hammer (hit and miss) mostly miss, and thats why I filed through. If you watch one of Ron Covell's videos he is working on a boat tail body, fabricating, welding in hole plugs, and metal finishing, and its the same thing, he uses a bulls eye pick so there just isn't as many misses. After the semester was over at Santa Monica I went back to my career because he said nobody is going to pay you to do metal work, bondo is just too easy and quick.
Once you start with the pick and file its just too tempting to keep filing a little more to get the pick peaks filed off, because at that point you don't want to start hammering again its just too close to being finished. To Ron's credit I will say that he stops at some point and he will just let the rest of the small low spots go. Ron was a big help with tig welding.
Then I found the (Tin Man) Kent White, he is truly a metal man. He is probably 70 now and he learned from the old timers at Harrahs museum, well known years ago for their great metal work on the classics. I learned from his videos to get rid of the picks and that you can use a hammer and dolly and get those low spots out and I don't need a sharp body file to tell me where they are, so I use a very old worn out straight file to shine the surface.
So I'm sorry you don't approve of my work Jay, life got in the way of doing this kind of work until the last few years and I'm still learning, but your comments are duly noted. I admit that none of us is too old or too experienced or too overloaded with so-called internet knowledge to learn more, and there is always room for improvement on any project, even an amature like me could show you things on your Chevelle that could have been done better. They are just never perfect and there are many different ways of getting to the same end result. You have ways that you consider proper and for good reason, and the restoration world has ways that they consider proper, but I've learned that they vary greatly in the restoration business.
Some of the collision techs say there is no difference and I think it depends on the one doing the work, some if not most of the resto shops do operate the same as collision, but some of the differences I have noticed is epoxy-v-etch, tig or gas-v-mig, more cure time before sanding, and more metal work to name a few.
Jay, its obvious that you have a lot of knowledge and experience and I have a lot of respect for that, your comments are always welcome.
Last edited by chevman on Sun Nov 25, 2012 7:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
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