Student Information about tools

[Jass]

Dear Sir,
I am student from India and I thank you for the knowldege i have gathered from ur Website.I am doing a project on accidented car repair.There is a lot of information about painting here and we have used it.

But we still need help with the tools used in Denting and denting techniques We tried to search but there is not much available about this on the internet. So can you please tell us about denting and tools used with pictures or suggest any links where we can find information about this.

I and my friends appreciate the good work you have done to help and spread knowledge about mechincial work.
Best Regards
Jassanpreet Singh

[SHOWCAR FINISH]

it's simple but a link could best describe it.

When you get a dent, you have your impact area ( low spot/tension area)
and you have secondary damage that's harder to see that's a surrounding ridge/crown(high spot). A good example of this is to slightly turn on a water faucet so that it drips in standing water. Now watch the water and the ripples. That's how metal reacts, during an accident and when you hammer on it. So before you even begin you want to fully be aware of the secondary damage cause primary is obvious. For the most case you want to straighten your panel in reverse order of how it occured. That would mean farthest away from your impact area. Your 2 most basic tools are your hammer and dolly. You have 2 techniques: hammer off and hammer on.
Hammer lightly and square on high spots, but never hammer a low spot unless from the backside. I usually use the dolly though for tapping up damage from the backside. The dolly is used mainly for behind panels. Make sure the dolly fits the contour of the panel. Anways, hammer off is great when you have a low spot next to a high spot. Hammer down the high
and press firmly up on the backside with the dolly. Always use soft blows, especially with high strength steels on newer cars. Always stop to check your work by rubbing your hand across the panel. Hammer on dolly is usually done after hammer off. W/ hammer on you hammer directly onto the dolly on the backside. you'll hear a ping noise, again, make sure your dolly fits the contour. Do these blows softer cause you can easily stretch the metal. Overlap your blows but keep it moving. A dolly is old school though but what I prefer. You can also hammer without a dolly. In eithercase, let your hammer rebound. Even if it smacks you in the forehead. More common is the stud gun due to time restraints and not being able to get to the backside(doors). With that, you just grind to metal and weld in your stud. Then you take a slide hammer or a stud holder and pull while hammering. Last you grind down your stud. My teacher always tells us metal working with a hammer and dolly is a lost art cause stud guns are most common. Anyways, those tools are pretty common. Always use grease and wax remover before you grind anything, or do anything really. Then there's your dual action sanders, certain grits of sand paper, sanding blocks, and a few primers you should know about. I can go on and on. My advice would be to start with the basics. Hammer/dolly/ sanding blocks/filler. I stayed away from the dual action sander for as long as I could and because of that my skills vastly improved. Yeah, the kids were laughing at my first experience with a da but it was easy to learn and get a feel for it. There's an endless amount of stuff regarding collision repair. Start off simple and don't get discouraged. If you got any questions just private message me or leave another comment in this thread.Good luck!

[Len]

Look around on this site and you'll find all the tools you'll need. Information on repair techniques are available here also. See links to Home and Store for more information.