It Wasn’t That Cold

With the end-of-year deadline racing towards me, I went out to the garage last night and made some headway on Heidi’s bodywork. With the kerosene burning, 60 grit sandpaper on my random orbital (DA) sander made short work of smoothing out the Bondo over the four patches. Three are ready for paint, while the fourth needs another shot of Bondo. Next I set about forming a patch for the hole I put in the rocker panel. It’s roughly eighteen inches long, which just so happens to be length of the piece of sheetmetal I’d bought. Using paper taped in place, I traced the outline of the opening and then transferred that to the metal. After following the line with my air cutter, I formed the flange that’ll mate with the pinch weld using a hand sledge and the workbench’s front edge. Some hand-bending made an approximate curve allowing me to vise-grip the patch in place and do some final tweaking. With the patch ready to go, I applied a liberal coat of Rustoleum primer to the backside and called it a night.