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I have been hitting the door skin lately. It has had its ups and downs. To begin with I had to add a little steel along the inner door's front edge near the bottom. The inner lower tub reproduction was a little off, as you can see in the pictures prior. This was no big deal. Then, I began to drill plug weld holes along the outer skin replacement. I clamped it in place using scribes I'd put before the original's removal, then tacked it solid before I removed the door to fold it all over. I tacked the corners and began to fold over the corner lips to try out the door skinning tool.

It all went great until it didn't.

As mentioned above the tool is great, but be bloody careful as you can wreck stuff quickly.

The leading and trailing edges of the door went great. The door bottom had a hiccup.

If you attempt a door skin job with this Astro DS1000 door skinning tool, DON'T drill the plug weld holes first. As I moved along the bottom lip, I noticed that the holes caused weak points and the metal wouldn't move as easily and would distort outward. This gave me little "tabs/puckers" that stuck down because of the uneven pressure and kinking at the plug weld holes.

Also, as I moved along the bottom, the above issue also caused the tool to go off track, inadvertently folding the steel over, but missing the inner tub lip. This in turn caused the tool to kink the outer door skin slightly, giving me a very slight concave depression just above the lower lip. I removed some steel on the inner edge of the outer lower lip, worked the kink a bit, then welded over an extension to get back on the inner tub.

What a pain. It's even worse because, as I was moving on the lower edge, my gut told me something was amiss and I should switch to doing it by hand and dolly. Hindsight is irritating to say the least.🤷🏼‍♂️

The photos show the highs and lows, but they actually aren't that bad. A 1/16" of filler and I should be ok. I am lucky that the very bottom of the panel's edge doesn't wave up and down, so I can build a very good, strong skim of filler along that edge. It's good because the filler won't actually be on the edge this way. I'm still fine tuning but this door is finally fitting the way I want it to. A pillar gap= good, rear door gap= good, window frame gap=good, lower gap= very workable, leading edge gap= to be determined once front sheet metal is hung.

Hours 465

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