We were blocking out the 55 wagon's roof today, and had a few low spots to bump upwards. To locate the lows on the inside, I thought to use one of our rare earth magnets in the center of the low, and use the body hammer on the bottom side of the roof to pinpoint the magnetic pull. These are 65 lb pull magnets that we use for our paper patterns. By a stroke of luck (blind squirrel finds acorn) we noticed in scuffing the inside of the roof that the magnet location readily appeared, for a more accurate locating method.
Robert strikes again. My shop is so full of metal dust, that's gotta work for me.
Kevin 1951 Chevy 3100 work truck Follow this saga in Project Journal Photos 1929 Ford pickup restored from the ground up. | 1929 Ford Special Coupe (First car) Busting rust since the mid-60's If you're smart enough to take it apart, you darn well better be smart enough to put it back together.
Had a couple questions on what the heck I'm showing in the video.. Haha... so let's clarify..
We were blocking out the primer on the roof and came across a few low spots. These were low enough to be seen in the paint if left alone, and yet mixing and sanding any filler "repair" would have taken longer than some simple bumping of the low area.
Since I don't have a Bullseye Pick, we thought to use some gentle hammering with a crowned body hammer beneath into a small shot bag on the top (outside) of the roof. We have some 65 lb pull rare earth magnets that we typically use for our paper patterns, and this showed to have enough strength to pull through the roof skin. So we placed the magnet in the center of the low area, and in order to locate on the underside, would skim across the roof from beneath with the hammer face to see where the pull was strongest. The location was then marked underneath with a sharpie, magnet removed and replaced with the shot bag, and the area was tapped into the shot bag until blocking showed the area where it should be.
On one of these "marking with a sharpie" efforts, there was a slight bit of dust on the bottom side of the roof, so I gave it a wipe with my hand to displace the dust and instantly saw the outer circle of the magnet. This was much more accurate than using the magnetic pull test, so we changed to this, and the metal bumping effort worked well. We surmise that this "dust" that clings to the magnetic field is likely sanding residue from the primer, or sanding residue from dressing welds inside the car, or both. In any case, it worked well to help transpose the low spot locations to the bottom side for more accurate hammering.
Pretty cool what one can learn by accident. I’m going to se if I can reproduce the action on my panel truck. I’m working the bag of walnuts out that the previous owner put in the roof. Thanks for sharing Robert
These old bolts are in my blood. Hard thing is focusing on just one.
1937 Chevy 1/2 ton panel 1953 GMC 2 ton. future car hauler
