BONDO SHAPING PERFECTION WITH THE BLADE

here is the exhaust repair count, now we are selecting the

blade

that will do the horizontal sweep, which will be

blade

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

I'm taking my time to completely cover the area, I don't want any gaps in the mud to ensure a great sweep through the mud with a perfect shape. I've put tape on the door frame in case any

bondo

gets in. I will do the sweep over both panels after completing this initial sweep again being careful to cover every square inch of the area that we are doing to sweep extending it a little more, okay we have finished covering it completely now we are ready to do our sweep, let's do a horizontal sweep and we have preselected the number one blade for that purpose by placing our fingers on the edge of the blade, one on the door jam at 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 that There are some gaps in the bonus as we do that sweep, that wall resolved itself as we continued to sweep it.

I'm going to pick up the extra bonus edge of the sheet and place it at the top of the door where I'm going to do my sweep down from that area dragging that bead-like plastic filler along the entire length of the repair, this gives you the opportunity to move and organize the

bondo

in a very precise way. You can see we have one more time by removing it and putting that bondo on top of the sweep and I'll continue moving down until I get a sweep that I like. You can see the bondo mixed and placed in such a way that it takes the shape of the adjacent one.

In the areas that are not damaged you can also see where the bondo towards the center of the door is mixing to zero, where there is no bondo, that is the extent of the damage and not allowing any more bonadu to be applied. In that area I'll continue to do this until I get a sweep that I'm happy with that is essentially good top-to-bottom coverage with the 2-0 bondo sweep around the damage parameter on the right side. I'm not too worried 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 pick up the extra bondo at the edge of the sheet and apply it to the adjacent panel where the damage continues to get good coverage once again. I am covering the entire area to be swept from top to bottom, 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 combining it with the panel that is not damaged, 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 to say it. 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 all we need to get there. Anything beyond that, there's excess filler and we want to remove that and start sanding with 180 grit and as I go along, I'm trying.

What you have to do is knock down the surface of the plastic filling, the orange peel, if you will, in the bondo. I'm not trying to shape it. I'm not trying to let the sander get into the painting area because I can create more problems by 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 I tried to work just the bondo area and when I knock it down to the point where it is I have a good surface if I see low spots here we have the sanding disc it was clogged I replace it with another clogging the sanding pad it is quite normal when you use thin paper like this continue on the surface it gains a light color where the surface is being sanded, we can still see some darker areas, those are low spots that 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's why we're doing a criss-cross repair, a horizontal and vertical sweep, line it up with a pencil that way I don't lose it and that pencil will transmit through the bondo and show me that I've covered it when I do my sweep. I'm not sanding anything except light sanding at this point until I get a good 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 applying it to the edge of that pencil, even a little beyond, which will ensure plenty of plastic filler to work with and to fill that low area that we are going to cross through the door jamb that has been filled with tape adhesive.

I roll up a bead of duct tape and place it there and it serves to keep the bondo off the door jamb. In this way we can combine the two panels without problems by taking our number 3 blade and passing it in the vertical plane in which we are. I'm going to replicate that whole area that I had that was low and give it a nice shape again by putting the bondo in front of the sweep and moving it along, there's a bead on the edge of the blade where I just continue sweeping until I get to a sweep that im happy i will remove the bondo at the bottom and place it once again in the front of the sweep along with the bondo that is on the blade and do another sweep through it.

I want to go down a little. a little lower. I wasn't very happy with the coverage, so I'm still working on it and will do a few more sweeps until I get it exactly how I want. We can see how I'm sweeping all the To the second line that I made and that's where I want to be to cover it completely and create the line that I'm looking for. Note that I approached the door jamb at an angle rather than simply up and down in alignment with the door. jamb that stops it prevents the blade from catching on the jamb of that door is there any edge that could catch it there is a sweep that I'm happy with I think we'll leave it like this again we're going to trim that little bit of extra with a steel blade to springs that you can buy again on our website.

Any extra that is outside the line that we have marked before doing our sweep we want to eliminate as carefully as possible, this will help us sand and prepare the surface. without any additional bonuses we need to work on, we have completely covered the areas I outlined with the pencil, we have a beautiful radius, I can already feel it with my hand and we are ready to take it down again. This time we're using 150 grit just to make it a little faster. Still, it is a very thin paper. You can see it sands much better this time.

It's completely full. It has a beautiful shape again. We are working our way up to a perfect shape through consecutive sweeps addressing the low areas we find as we approach the final block again, be careful not to sand the areas beyond the sweep, we don't want to do anything, create low spots that will only want to tear down, you can see the The paper is stuck, we'll put another sheet there and finish sanding. 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 that is applied as if it were wax. a car and it will give you a guide coat that will make it pretty easy to identify the low spots, if they exist in your blocking process cover the entire area then take our blower and blow off the excess and we'll use the 150 on the long block when I start As I sand it I can see that there is a lot of area that is already taking shape.

It has a beautiful shape. I am using a hard block to identify the panel. Any low point will be identified immediately, whether it's just one or two Mills low it will show clearly and make it very easy to identify and resolve that issue. On the next sweep, we conceded two areas right in the middle, near the door jamb, which I expected to be the lowest. some of the damage appears almost immediately the rest 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 by cleaning it a little removing the dust and continuing sanding.

I will continue sanding this until all the bondo has been sanded and I can identify what needs to be done on the next sweep. Here it is after it has been blocked and Now I am going to identify the low spots that still exist, I see one there from the original damage, there is a low spot indicated by the guide layer, a large one right in the middle and a small one right in the tailgate edge, now what? What we need to do is sweep those existing areas that are still slightly low and I'll start with the big one right in the middle covering it completely with bondo up to the pencil line that I drew around it, always draw your pencil. line past the damage just to have a safe margin to apply your bondo and make sure we completely cover that low spot again, we're using blade number one for our horizontal sweep starting at the top and just moving down applying pressure on the lines pencil, which is the outermost area of ​​damage, the outermost damaged area still exists at the low point.

I'll continue sweeping down until I get a sweep I like. Once that was done, I moved to the next area again. trying to choreograph my bondo applications so as not to move over an area where I already achieved a perfect sweep that would only slow down the process. I have to do it again. I'm doing all my horizontal sweeps making sure I don't touch the areas I swept before that, if you find any difficult spots on the bondo just select them, they go in there from time to time and the sweep will identify them so you can select them.

Removing the bondo from the edge of the blade and applying it once again to the top of the sweep, this would give me the material to move around the damaged area and give myself a nice sweep again by applying pressure to the edges of the blade just outside. the damaged area now use the last bit of bondo to fill in the little low spot we have on the back door, the edge of the bondo there again, be careful not to touch the area i swept there in the middle, find a little bit of one part hardened of the bondo there, how to select it, see the line that drags down, get that out of there and continue with my sweet, this is a great way to move and organize the bondo and use it there during the course.

From several sweeps you can really use material wealth. I'm happy with that sweep, we'll let it go there. Oh, remove the little that still exists on the edge of the blade, clean it up a bit and let the bondo harden. We don't let it harden completely, it just starts to solidify and then we can trim away the areas that are there as we identified two additional ones that we need to do. We have done a sweep over these three low points. We have these two. That remains to be done, we'll sand it one more time with 150, sanding it lightly, just knocking down the surface, being careful again not to sand the damage that we've already blocked, just be very light on the sanding, holding it firmly in place in the areas you're knocking down the surface you just swept again, you just want to knock it down, knock down the orange peel and carefully sand the edge if you find there is too much bondo on the edge.

On the edge of your sweep, you can place a piece of masking tape to protect the area you are sanding. Now again we will apply our dry guide coat to the areas where we have just applied bondo and have done our sweep, we don't have to cover the entire panel, those other areas have already been blocked there satisfactorily, removing the extra dust, the additional guide coat , taking our hard butter, give it an egg red color, if desired. I like to keep it within the 180 and the 150 grit range again we can see that that area has been filled and it is blocking very well, very quickly it continues to block it and this is the result of there all the areas took beautiful shape just as I was hoping, we still have this area and this area to finish blocking, I could see that there was still a low point that traveled a little further than I thought.

I'm going around it again with a pencil and I'm ready to do my The last two points that I need to sweep again. I'm applying my plastic filler right on the edge of the pencil line I drew surrounding the damaged area so I don't lose sight of it. The pencil lines on the bondo never cause you any problems in the process ofpaint. This has been tested and proven hundreds of times in a body shop. Stitched, don't think twice. Never use a pencil. It's great to move the camera slightly so you can see. all so you can see the full sweep I'm doing now I'm using blade number two and that's not the blade I started with so I'm going to change blades but as we can see the number two plates are a little stiff, I grabbed it by accident, but this is something you can do sometimes and If it's not sweeping like it was initially, 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 I put it through the repair.

I can immediately tell that this is the correct sheet because it's the one I preselected and it slides beautifully across that panel. 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. So I do a horizontal sweep and I'm using number one. sheet because that's what we started with and that's what we're going to use. It is rigid enough to accommodate the slight radius we initially identified on that panel.

I just cleaned the edge of the sheet, that's all. you have to do when you're doing your sweep you don't have to clean the entire blade there we have a beautiful sweep clean the blade a little bit and let the bondo start to harden I'll remove the tape at this point it's protecting the areas that I don't want to have no bondo and it can be very difficult to get it out of a door handle gap menteur the number of areas you want to keep bondo out of any area that is not being repaired I am doing my 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 break down the surface to remove the stickiness and reduce the texture of the bondo so it looks good. It will sand quickly with a block. The same goes for this area. Here we are tearing it down. You can see that it is quite consistent and the way we look as we sand it with the DA indicates that we filled it and it has a beautiful shape. We apply our dry guide coat to the entire area we just sanded removing the additional guide code. Now we are ready to sand again with 150 grit on a hard block, we are moving over the areas we just filled and they are very obviously filled and the correct shape, we just need to work the surface until we have completely knocked it down, removing everything the guide code.

If there were still any low spots in the guide layer, we would make another movie, but this one is going to cover all of those areas. I'll sand a little here. The paper is gummed, so I'll change it and finish it. This is what it looks like after you've done the final sanding. I can see the five additional sweeps we did from the first vertical and horizontal sweeps we did. I'm cleaning up some areas where the bondo slipped under the cleaning tape, removing the tape and then putting it on to protect the paint. Now we have the door we are going to open with a 1/8 bit, just hold it against the edge of the door and move it down carefully.

This will cut a small gap 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 the sanding on the edge of the door and on the edge of the side panel and we will have a job that will be ready to go. paint, taking it to the end. Now that we have opened the door we will start sanding the edge with a block just to clean up the edge, the edge will be a little rough from the bit moving across it, sanding it lightly it will lie flat against the metal and do the same on the side panel and we are ready to continue.

This panel is now ready to paint. We have a panel that matches perfectly from the front door to the back door. I couldn't do it better. Here it is after. paint before assembling the car and you can see the Lions indicating the straight contours that beautifully blend one panel to the next, certainly better than the car was originally, with production flaws you rarely get that kind of

perfection

again, Seeing it is the best indication. about how that panel looks, how it turned out and we have a panel that is two panels that merge perfectly, they have a moving radius and a vertical and horizontal plane that combines perfectly with the original shape of that car, mentioning a panel is litmus definitive. test, it will tell you where you are and from the customer's perspective that is the only thing they care about, it looks beautiful and it keeps looking beautiful, the life of the car, which is the most important goal, and you will achieve both when using the sword that