Thanks for the comments guys, and Jerry, appreciate the glimpse of history. Always good to hear of pride in workmanship.
More progress:
The TIG is used to fully weld the patches in place...
Front side:
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Back side, full penetration on the weld..
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The weld seams are then planished and dressed. Next, the front of the hood had a stress crack adjacent to one of the rubber bumpers. To stabilize the hood prior to cutting out this area, the brace is clamped back in place..
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The damaged area is cut out, a "doubler" had been used toward the front to add strength to the area, so care is used to not cut that off..
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A replacement patch is cut out, bends added, and tacked in place. A plug weld ties this in with the doubler..
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All trimmed and welds dressed, the hood bumper hole is re-drilled in the new patch. Then we notice a bit of filler closer to the nose of the hood (arrow). Let's remove that while we're here to see what carnage lies in wait.
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Gotta love this game of dominos..
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The low area needs to be bumped up, and with little room for swinging hammers, a new tool is in order. Using the South Bend "milling machine" a die is made for the outer portion..
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Using a pair of C-clamp vise grips (there goes another pair) the die we made will be welded to one side, the opposite is giving a bit of a trim to better fit in the confines of the slight gap available on the inside..
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I missed the action shots, but the clamping of the vise grip is used to raise the low areas. Then dressed out for a much better "filler free" lower edge for the hood.
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With Mike having completed the dies to duplicate the ribs in the hood brace we did a test run on a piece of 16 Ga cold rolled steel. First upper die addresses middle rib only, way to much drawing going on to expect this out of one set of dies...
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Then top die is changed out for the remainder of the ribs...
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A bit of fine tuning needed, but looks like this process will work to repair the rot in the bottom of the brace ends..
