I bought one (shrinking disc) from wolfe's metal fabrication...it should arrive soon, it's a 4 1/2" one for my little grinder... I am a newbie for body work, and with my truck I should get lots of practice....luckily I have a neighbor that has built some beautiful cars and I am in the process of coercing him with a bottle of tequila or two to give me a body work clinic. He is old school and has talent oozing out of him. Hopefully some of it will rub off. Any basic articles I should read before I sit down with him?
I have a mess of dents on my fenders from gravel getting kicked up when driving, I am hoping the disc will take care of them
Hey Mike, I'd start by readin' everything in the tech archives on body work, metal working & chops. A book or video will give ya the basic idea, but it's the pratice that will take the kinks outa the learning curve. It's not 'high science', but does take some study. S****ey Devils C.C. "Meanwhile, back aboard The Tainted Pork"
sweet, I just bought my first set of body hammers and I want to get really good at this...I started learning to weld as well... I find it all rather relaxing... I am always open to learning and I tend to remember everything someone tells me...
I've had a Sunchaser shrinking disc for 15 years. They work good. I think I paid like $35 in '92, a lot of money back then but it has paid for itself many times over. Oil canning: I had an annoying oil can on top of the rear fender of a '68 Road Runner. If you pushed it out of the inside it looked perfect. Just the vibration of the running engine would **** it back down. The way to fix this is to beat it out from the inside, thus overstretching it. You will now have a bulge in the body panel. Then you shrink it back to the factory original contour. When done this way, the metal stay there and there will be no filler needed. Most people and body shops would have just used a skim coat of bondo, not the right way to fix it. This tool works so well, I used it to shrink the rib out a '56 Chevy hood to completely smooth it. Yes, this was a big job and some filler was needed in the final product but it came out nice. (The hood needs support by welding a 3/8" rod to the underside.) You may see a lot of smooth hoods on a cl***ic Chevy but most still retain the rib. Only about 1% of the cars (maybe less) have a perfectly smooth hood with no rib.
so not to hijack that, but my buddy told me to get weld through or etch primer, this way I can work on the truck and not have it rust to hell... any thoughts? Oh and I checked out ghia specialties... I used to be a vw guy.... those cars are SICK
I got one of John's shrinking discs- it does a great job smoothing lumpy metal and drawing up oil cans! The DVD is easy to follow, but I'd reemphasize a few points: -Its LOUD. Hearing protection is a must and I waited to use it until Momma and the kids were out of the house. -It has more gyroscopic effect than a Navy T-28 at takeoff power! Follow John's advice to hold it against the work while it spins down. -Watch the DVD, then practice, then watch the DVD again... repeat the cycle several times. Each time, I saw and applied tips that I'd missed the previous viewing. -Be VERY careful. This thing could hurt you badly. Wear gloves, eye protection, no loose sleeves/jewlery, and NEVER take your eyes off it. -Don't miss the forest for the trees... Initially, I was so focused on removing little bumps that I didn't notice that I'd shrunk the panel's crown (I flattened the gentle curve in the metal). Had to go back and do some hammer-on-dolly work to stretch it and re-raise the crown. Overall, two thumbs up! Pics to folllow during the next tech week.
Just Gary-- thanks for posting all that. I've had one of John's discs for about 6 moths, and I agree with everything you said (except I couldn't verify the comparison to the Navy T-28 from lack of first-hand experience with such equipment ). One other thing I'll add, is that when I first used the disc, I had it on a 4600 RPM 9" grinder. It worked OK, but almost too slow to even see any progress. I've since purchased an 8000 rpm 7" grinder, and it works WAY better.
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