The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Paint and Body Shop Help-High Spot from Hell

Every time you strike metal enough to leave a dent you have stretched the metal. Every time you strike metal with a "hammer on dolly" blow you have stretched the metal. What you end up with is the "oil can" you describe. What we used to do to shrink stretched metal is to heat a nickle size spot in the stretched area to cherry red (no, it's not too hot) using an acetylene torch, then placing the dolly directly under the red spot, hammer the metal around the red spot toward and into the red spot then quench with a wet rag. Hammer all the way around the red spot each time. Don't hammer hard, the metal will move fairly easily. It takes practice to do this right. Repeat as necessary to remove the complete stretched area. Sometimes you will shrink it too much and will have to do some hammer on dolly to stretch the metal back out. While I did a ton of shrinking using an acetylene torch I never did it using a propane torch as noted above. It may work OK but be careful of putting too much heat into the panel. If the spot doesn't turn cherry red in two-three seconds you'll need a hotter torch. I know that sounds funny but you want to get the spot you're shrinking hot quickly so you can shrink & quench it quickly so that the heat doesn't have time to migrate to the rest of the panel. If you overheat the panel you can end up with a nighmare of warped metal. I would strongly recommend practicing this with an old panel you have laying around before attempting this on your ride. You can ruin a good panel doing it wrong. Another tip is to wear lightweight cotton gloves while working out a dent. They protect your hands from the heat and sharp edges PLUS they make it much easier to feel imperfections in the metal. When feeling for imperfections always run your hand over the work lengthwise in a sanding motion rather than a side to side motion. You'll get a much better read of the panel doing it that way.