BONDO SHAPING PERFECTION WITH THE BLADE

here is the exhaust repair count now we are selecting the

blade

that will do the horizontal sweep that will be

blade

number one it has a slight radius i am running a set of tests to see how it moves across the panel and now it is going to work great now on the vertical radius we've got a little more curve we're going to use blade number three so I'm doing a test sweep on the damaged area with that and that works perfectly for that application we're applying our mud and what's The thing to remember here is to completely cover the damaged area and a bit beyond.

I take my time to completely cover the area. I don't want gaps in the mud that will ensure excellent sweeping over mud with perfect shape. I've taped the doorjamb in case there's any

bondo

there. I'll do the sweep over both panels after completing this initial sweep again being careful to cover every square inch of the area we're doing to sweep by spreading it out a bit more ok we're done covering it completely now we're ready to do our sweep let's do a horizontal sweep and we have pre-selected the number one blade for that purpose by placing our fingers on the edge of the blade one on the door frame on the edge of the door the other just outside the damaged area you bought in the middle of the door doing our sweep initially you can see there are some gaps in the

bondo

as we do that sweep that wall resolved itself as we continue to sweep I'm going to pick up the extra bondo from the edge of the sheet and place it on top of the door where I'm going to do my sweep down from that area dragging that plastic filler in a bead across the entire repair this gives you the opportunity to move and arrange the bondo in a very precise way you can see we have once again in removing it and placing that bondo on top of the sweep and I'll continue to move down until I get a sweep that I like, you can see the bondo blend and move arranged in such a way that it's taking the shape of the adjacent one. areas that aren't damaged, you can also see where the bondo toward the center of the door is getting shuffled to zero where there's no bondo that's the spread of the damage and not allowing any more bonadu to be applied-- in that area I'll continue to do this until that I get a sweep that I'm happy with and that's essentially good top-down coverage with the bondo being swept 2-0 around the right side damage parameter.

I'm not too concerned about the bondo mixing to zero because I'm pushing it on the edge of the door and there's not much to see there, but it's taking shape on both sides. I'm happy with that sweep. I'm going to collect the bonus bonus on the edge of the blade and apply it to the adjacent panel where the damage continues to get good coverage once again. I am from top to bottom covering the entire area to be swept. It is essential that you do this. to get a perfect sweep again using the edge of the panel as my only control surface and on the right side blending it with the undamaged panel, this will create several lines on that panel in the horizontal plane that will be completely consistent with the original shape of the panel removing the extra now after the panel has the bottom cured slightly I trim it with a spring steel spreader I have shaved mine to be round and it tends to remove the bondo a little easier for me but just the steel spreader will remove the excess this is easy to clean and will make your job a lot easier before you start saying that the reason I removed it from the front of that repair in the middle of the door is because where the bondo mixes where you can see the paint through the bondo that's as far as we have to go with it anything beyond there being overfill and we want to remove that and start sanding with 180 grit and as i move it all i'm trying what you need to do is knock down the surface of the plastic filler the orange peel if you want in the bondo i am not trying to shape it i am not trying to let the sander into the paint area because i can create more problems when sanding in the paint and that will require more applications of bondo to work out those low spots so I keep it flat.

I'm buzzing trying to work just the bondo area and when I break it down to the point where it's has a good surface if I see low spots here we have the clogged sanding disc I replace it with another one clogging your sanding pad it's pretty normal when you're using thin paper like this continue on the surface is gaining a light color where the surface is sanded we can still see some darker areas those are low spots I will identify at the end of the sanding if we run our hand up and down we can find that there is a low point in the middle.

I anticipated that that's why we're doing a crisscross repair, horizontal and vertical sweep, outline it with a pencil, that way I don't lose it and that pencil will broadcast through the bondo and show me that I've covered it when I do my sweep. I'm not going to sand except for light sanding at this point until I get a nice surface that is relatively straight again. I'm doing my test sweep with my number three blade that fits the radius we're going to apply. our bondo again by applying it up to the edge of that pencil, even past it, which will ensure plenty of plastic filler to work with and to fill in that low area.

Let's go across the doorjamb that has been filled with duct tape. I roll a blob of duct tape and place it there and it serves to keep the bondo off the doorjamb. In this way, we can join the two panels without problems, taking our number 3 blade running it in the vertical plane that we are on. I'm going to reproduce all that area that I had down and give it a beautiful shape again by putting the bondo in front of the sweep and moving it across there's a bead on the edge of the blade where I just keep sweeping until I get a sweep that I'm with. happy I'll remove the bondo at the bottom there and place it one more time at the front of the sweep along with the bondo that's on the blade and do another sweep along I want to go down a little bit lower I wasn't very happy with the coverage so I keep working and I'll do a few more sweeps until it's exactly how I want it, we can see how I'm sweeping all the way up to the second line that I did and that's where I want to be to fully cover it and create the line that I'm looking for.

Notice: I approached the doorjamb at an angle rather than just up and down in alignment with the door. jamb stopping it keeps the sash from catching on the doorjamb is there any edges that could catch it is there a sweep I'm happy with I think we'll leave it at that again let's trim that little extra with a steel blade to springs you can buy on our website again any extras that fall outside the line we have marked out before sweeping we want to remove them as carefully as possible this will help us sand and prepare the surface without any extra bondo we need to work on we have fully covered the areas that I have outlined with the pencil we have a nice radius I can feel it with my hand now and we are ready to take that down again we have we are using 150 grit this time just to make it a little faster still very thin paper you can see that it is it's sanding much better this time it's completely filled out it has a beautiful shape again we're working in a perfect shape through back to back sweeps tackling any low areas we found as we approach the final block again being careful not to sand any rougher areas beyond the sweep we don't want to do any create low points that you just want to knock down you can see the paper is stuck.

We'll put another sheet in there and finish sanding ours. Now I'm going to apply a guide code. This will be our first block saying this is a 3m dry guide layer. It is a black powder. You put it like wax. a car and it will give you a guide coat which will make it easier to identify low spots, if they exist in your blocking process cover the whole area then take our blower and blow off any excess and we'll use the 150 on when I start sanding the long block , I can see that there is a lot of area already taking shape.

It has a beautiful shape. I am using a hard block for it to identify the panel. Any low spots will be immediately identified, whether it's just one or two Mills low, it will show up clearly and make it very easy to identify and fix that issue with the next sweep, we allow two areas right in the middle near the door jamb , which I expected to be the lowest. some of the damage that comes up almost immediately the rest around it looks pretty good we are sanding we can see the pencil lines on the panel that transmits through the bondo and gives you an indication even after you cover it up cleaning it up a bit with blowing dust and continue sanding I'll continue to sand this until all the bondo has been sanded and I'll be able to identify what needs to be done on the next sweep here it is after it's locked in and now I'm going to identify the low spots that still exist.

See one there of the original damage. There is a low point there indicated by the guide layer. A big one right in the middle and a small one right at the edge of the back door. Now what? what we need to do is sweep up the existing areas that are still a bit low and i'll start with the big one right in the middle covering it completely with bondo to the pencil line i've drawn around it always draw your pencil line past the damage just to give you a safe margin to apply your bondo and make sure you fully cover that low point again. the pencil lines, which is the outermost area of ​​damage, the outermost damaged area still exists at the low point.

I'll continue to sweep down until I get a sweep that I like. trying to choreograph my bondo applications so as not to move over an area i have already achieved a perfect sweep which would only slow down the process i have to do it again i am doing all my horizontal sweeps making sure i dont touch the areas i have swept before that, if you find tricky spots in the bondo just pop them out, they get in there occasionally and the sweep will identify them so you can pick them out. I am removing the bondo from the edge of the sheet and applying it once more to the top of the sweep, this would give me the material to move across the damaged area and give me a beautiful sweep again by applying pressure to the edges of the sheet just outside the damaged area now use the last bit of bondo to fill in the slight low point we have on the back door edge of the bondo there again being careful not to touch the area i have swept there in the middle find a bit of a hardened part of bondo there how to pick that see the line creeping down get that out of there and continue my sweet this is a great way to move and arrange the bondo and use it there over the course of several sweeps you can really utilize the material wealth .

I'm happy with that sweep. Let's leave it there. Oh, remove what little is still on the edge of the sheet. we don't let it harden all the way it just starts to solidify and then we can cut out the areas that are there as we identified two more that we need to do we've done a sweep over these three low points we have these two what's left to do what we are sanding one more time with 150 sanding it lightly just tearing down the surface being careful again not to sand into the damage we have already blocked just be very light when sanding holding it firmly on the in the areas you are tearing down the surface you just swept again, you just want to knock it down knock down the orange peel and sand carefully on the edge if you find there is an edge too smooth on the edge of your sweep you can put a piece of masking tape to protect the area you are sanding now again come on to apply our dry guide coat to the areas we just applied bondo and have done our sweeping we don't have to cover the entire panel those other areas have already been blocked in there satisfactorily blow off the extra dust the extra guide coat take our hard butter give an egg red if you want I like to keep it within the 180 and 150 grit range again we can see that that area has filled in and it's blocking very well very quickly continue blocking it and this is the result of all the areas shaped up beautifully just as I expected we still have this area and this area to finish blocking I could see there was still a little low point that traveled a bit more than I thought.

I'm circling it again with a pencil and I'm ready to do my final two points that I need to sweep over again. I'm applying my plastic filler right to the edge of the pencil line I drew around the damaged area so I don't lose track. The pencil lines on the bondo would show up never give you any trouble at all in the painting process this has been tested and proven hundreds of times in a body shop stitch up don't think twice never use a pencil it's great moving the camera slightly so you can see everything so you can see all the sweeping I'm doing right now I'm using blade number two and that's not the blade I'm going withI started so I'm going to change the blades but as we can see the number two plates are a bit stiff.

I caught it by accident but this is something you can do sometimes and if it's not sweeping the way it was initially done take note and switch to the correct blade and they come back with number three and here's number three and let's do our sweep again we will apply our mud to the front of the sweep and draw it along the repair. I can tell right away that this is the correct blade because it's the one I pre-selected and it sweeps the panel beautifully, okay. I'm going to take the extra mud on the edge of the sheet and I'm going to apply it to the last area that we need to fill in again without touching the area that I just swept I don't want to create any problems in that area just do a horizontal sweep and I'm using the number one sheet because that's what we started with and that's what we're going to use it's stiff enough to accommodate the slight radius we initially identified in that panel I just cleaned up the edge of the sheet that's all you need to do when you're doing your sweep you don't have to clean the whole sheet there we have a nice sweep clean the sheet a bit and let the bondo start to harden I'll remove the tape at this point it's protecting the areas where I don't want any bondo to form and it can be very hard to get it out of the door handle recess sanding here again with 150 grit just lightly sanding over it and knocking down the orange peel on the bondo remember we have a beautiful shape we just want to knock down the surface to remove stickiness and reduce texture of the bondo to make it fit Will sand down quickly with a block Same with this area here we're tearing it down you can see it's pretty consistent and its appearance as we sand it down with the DA indicating we filled it in and it's a beautiful shape so we applied our dry guide coat to the entire area we just sanded blowing out the extra guide code we are now ready to sand again with 150 grit on a hard block we are moving across the areas we just filled in and they are very obviously filled and they are the correct shape we just need to work the surface until we have knocked it down removing all the guide code if there were any low spots in the guide layer still left we would do another movie but this is going to this is going to cover all those areas i will do a bit of sanded here the paper is stuck so i'll change it and finish it this is what it looks like after i've done the final sanding i can see the five extra sweeps we did since the first vertical and horizontal sweeps we did i'm cleaning up some areas where the bondo was slid under the tape cleaning removing the tape and then I put to protect the paint we now have door we are going to open with a 1/8 bit just hold it against the edge of the door and move down carefully this will cut a little space in the bondo that will allow you to open the door and then you can remove the masking tape that I applied there and we can finish sanding the edge of the door and the edge of the side panel and we will have a job that is ready to paint, taking it all the way down .

Now that we've got the door open, we'll start sanding the edge with a block just to clean up the edge. The edge will be a bit rough as the bit moves across it. Sanding it down will lay it flat against the metal and do the same on the side panel and we're ready to move this panel now it's ready to paint we have a panel that blends perfectly from the front door to the back door couldn't do better now here it is after paint before After we've assembled the car and you can see the lions indicating the straight contours that beautifully blend one panel to the next, certainly better than the production-challenged car originally was, you rarely get that kind of

perfection

again. how that panel looks how it turned out and we have a panel that is two panels that blend seamlessly they have a moving radius and a vertical and horizontal plane that blend perfectly with the original shape of that car quoting a panel is the ultimate iridescence the test will tell you where you are and from the customer's perspective it's all they care about it looks beautiful and stays beautiful the life of the car is the most important goal and you will achieve both problems when using the blade that