I have a issue... I've had a small but very noticeable wrinkle on my passenger rear quarter panel above the tire and just below and behind the rear quarter window (from inside the trunk it's right at the front edge of the hinge) and of course it goes across both the concave and convex parts of the panel... well I tried to hammer it out and instead of my original crease with the edge out its now kind of bowed out... can't find a proper shrinking hammer so I picked up a framing hammer which also as that meat tenderizer pattern on it but it weighs a lot more... would I use this on or off dolly? or not at all because it's not the right hammer... I've been fighting this for the last couple days with the basic set from harber freight, and I can't find one at a local shop... I've don't some shrinking with a heat gun and wet rag... the compound angles are throughing me for a loop. need some suggestions. I gave up on it and just used bondo, light sanding and primer just to hold it over for now, I do want to revisit it on my next day off to get it don't right. thanks.
"can't find a proper shrinking hammer so I picked up a framing hammer which also as that meat tenderizer pattern on it but it weighs a lot more... would I use this on or off dolly? or not at all because it's not the right hammer..." I would never suggest using a "waffle head" hammer for any metal work, so the answer to that question is not at all.
If you use a shrinking hammer...Use it with a dolly, it wont work without one. The serreations on a frameing hammer are not sharp enough to do the job well.
Paint and body guy herd pic would help tons . The right,good quality tools are very very important. The shrinking hammer has to be used with a dolly. Metal work it an art and takes years to master. Be patient. Send us a pic we love the pictures
My left rear quarter always looked just fine to me since I got the car back in 89. As I was stripping it I came upon a lot of Bondo covering the quarter surface above the body line. I talked to my paint/body man, Dale Doll, and showed him photos of what I found. He told me that it looks like it was worked on by someone who didn't know what they were doing - called it just bad body work. I asked him if I should replace the quarter and all he asked me was "did it have rust". I told him "no", only on the bottom. So he tells me to only replace the bottom and leave the top for him. Dale told me that he can work most of that out using a hammer and dolly so all I did the was cut off the bottom like he said. I know 100% that if I tried to hammer this out myself, I would only make it worse. Last year, I gave him a drivers door that had old Bondo/sideswipe damage and when I got it back, Dale told me that he just worked the steel and used very little filler so I'm going to always leave it to the expert
what give me issues is the crease crosses both concave and convex areas... and when I fix one the other seems to deform I'm thinking of using a block of wood and form it to a shallow bowl to try and push the lifted area back down.
You need to shrink the damage at the body line first...Then the rest will relax and be easier to bump back into shape.
Here is a better view of what I've been dealing with... just can't get that down... was working on it again today with dolly/hammer and heat gun and so far no real progress... I also tried applying heat up at the line as suggested to no avail...
You have a fair amount of stretched metal there. Adding heat makes the metal expand...You dont need that ...You need to shrink that high crease.
I know that's why I started this thread... I've been told that (and seen on youtube) you use heat and a cold rag to shrink the metal... how should I do it?
