Bodywork is probably the best test of patience in the automotive field. Unlike everything else we do to our cars, bodywork is not a matter of simply turning bolts. The whole idea is to reshape a piece of metal that has lost its original form. The principles are fairly easy to understand, but learning exactly how to tweak something and when enough is not too much can only come with practice. Speaking of practice, you should start on something of typical sheetmetal thickness that you really don’t care about, such as an extra fender or your brother’s car.
We’re only going to cover dents you can access from both sides. This usually means taking off a door panel or reaching around an inner fenderwell. You can almost always get to the back of a panel.
A briefing on sandpaper will also be handy. First, the bigger the number, the finer the grit. Coarse grit (50 to 80) removes everything—paint, body filler, rust and metal. It works quickly and can leave deep scratches in medium or soft surfaces. An all-purpose grit is 180. It removes paint with a little more muscle and is really good for putting the finishing shape on body filler, removing scratches left from coarser sandpaper and smoothing the transition from metal to body filler or paint. Either 240- or 320-grit paper can be used to sand an entire car before a filler/primer is applied. If the primer is thin (not a filling type) or you are sanding primer in preparation of paint, use 400-grit.
With experience, all of this becomes more natural and you may even find that you have a talent for undoing life’s little accidents. Check out the sidebars below for the details.
