So, it's been a bit of a break here, with Christmas, New Years and everything.
Happy New Year all!
Back to business:
This wagon has been in Finland for some four years, and from the relatively fresh
look of the paint, the hood was sand blasted from the inside by the previous
owner. If you ever thought of sand blasting a car: Don't!
The '68 Chevy hood has a substantial inner structure, with two big triangle
shaped holes. When blasting, the sand has thumped the sheet metal in these
areas so hard, that it stretched considerably.
I trailered the hood to a good friend's body shop, and he showed me how to
shrink the stretched metal. Here's how I did it with an electric spot welder of
sorts, equipped with a graphite rod.
The metal is heated in a slow circular motion, and when the center of the
area is reached, the middle has a dull glow to it, and the area is rapidly cooled
with a long blast of compressed air. It's slow work, and gives you an urge,
and an itch to go faster and... Well it's time consuming.
One of those circular thingys takes quite some time to do, so this is the result
of a few hours of work, counting in some hammer and dolly work and lots of
planning, and hesitating. This shrinking is all new to me
After all this work, the hood seemed about as crooked as it was to begin with,
only it looked a lot worse. Luckily my pal came to the rescue, and did his
magic with hammers and dollies, and the result is so good, that it seems like
an awesome amount of body filler might make the hood like a hood again.
The hood is back in my own shop (just a heated garage, really), and put aside
for now. This kind of work really makes it feel the project is at a standstill.