How To Lead: Leading a Body Panel with Gene Winfield - Using Body Solder Kit from Eastwood

Well, today I'm going to show you how I would

lead

an area on this Fender. Now first we have to prepare it and by that I mean that it has to be very clean. What you're looking for is to try to get it 100% clean now that we've done it. I already sanded it with this electric sander with type 0 velcro. Here we remove the primer and the old paint. Now I'm going to sand it a little more with a 36 grit to get it really clean and rough. To give it a little roughness, now you'll notice that I was going in different directions, I cross sanded and I got all of that in different directions.

Now I'm going to take a rotary file, this is a tapered rotary file and it's very rough and I want to get into these low spots where I might have rust or some old paint still there. I literally took it out and cleaned it so there is absolutely no rust or black. It really has to be 100% clean. If it's not, then you won't be able to tin it and if you don't tin it completely you won't be able to let an untinned, untinned surface not deteriorate, you can't tin it. it has to be 100% tinned if possible now I recommend copper that is bought in the market and it is a copper made for cleaning pots and pans and we use an old pair of pliers or a pair of ice grips to hold it and we are going to use this copper and with heat and now we are going to use Eastwood's tin butter.

It's very good. Now Eastwood's tin butter has a small amount of

lead

particles, it has actual

solder

type particles and that will help you tin the surface. much better, you can tin a surface with acid core

solder

, you can tin it with pure muratic acid, but you have to apply a little bit of lead when you do it with M muratic acid, muratic acid, this has acid and now it has lead. take a torch with about a number two, number one, two or three tip and then we have the eastern wooden slanted tip that you just push in there.

See this slanted tip is flexible and it's made to fit different sized torch tips so you just push it in like this and you use a settler, only it draws the oxygen through these little holes in there, so it draws out the oxygen from the air right there, okay, acetylene, only now it's a good idea to do this, this has fumes coming out of here, you know, you know you can't, you can't breathe this stuff, so what I do is I I have a little fan that spins right here, I have this fan that spins very slowly and it's going to blow the fumes away from me so I don't have to breathe them in, you can also use a respirator or a dust mask to warm it up quite a bit and the test is not hot enough.

You can see the fan blowing it right away. Now it is very important to always tin. a little further than you think you're going to need if you think you're going to let a surface that's only four or five in diameter you want to tin a lot further than that, the reason for this is that very often the heat is going to warp your metal and you may have to want to put the lead further away than you originally intended and then if you have to put the lead further away and you haven't tinned that area then you will have to go back. and reheat the whole area and it's a completely complicated process now I'm going to do this with water, clean water and a clean rag and you take some baking soda, you know, I've got about half a bucket of water here and I'm going to put quite a bit strong baking soda and this helps neutralize the acid, you want to get rid of the acid and you want to do this while it's still hot or warm, you don't want it, it's just the way It's easier if you let it cool too much, then it's very, very It's hard to get the acid out of there, so you do it while it's still pretty hot.

It is a very complicated process. Now that I have it, very clean, there is a little. of the rag sticks there just a little bit and, uh, what I usually do is take a new or clean wire brush, maybe a stainless steel wire brush, and you can brush it lightly to remove any dirt or rags. Okay, now I'm going to take a very new wire brush and just brush it lightly to remove the little particles from the red rag. The whole secret is to leave it as clean as possible. very very clean wherever you go with lead.

I know of a $200,000 car and they didn't properly clean the lead acid two or three months after painting the car, they had to strip it and start over and I got all the rear fenders clean and nice now if your wire has been lying around if your lead has been lying around now i try to put it in plastic anyway i sand it you clean it with 80 grit 80 clean the dirt and grime off so it should be very very clean now this is a new lead and it's beautiful, but I'm just showing you if it stays like this is how to clean it so it's as clean as possible now I'm going to I'm going to prepare the main palette before I turn the torch back on.

Now I take a piece of 400 sandpaper, regular 400 sandpaper, and I see that this trowel has been used quite a bit. This is an Eastwood trowel and you place it on a flat surface and sand it. so it's perfectly flat and perfectly clean absolutely clean and flat very smooth and if you don't have it smooth then the lid will stick to the paddle easier or faster. Look, I'm sanding the edges just a little. rolling it a little bit on a very very clean plane, see a nice flat surface, now we're going to heat up the tallow, everything is included in the main Eastwood kit, the tip, the sinker, the tallow, the tensioning compound, I think everything is equipped except the copper the tin plating compound everything heat the toallow get enough even there now I remove it on this piece of denim fabric now on purpose I put a lot more there and I'm cleaning it look I want I want a very very thin film there , you can barely see it, such a small piece of film.

Okay, now the palette is ready, put it there now. I'm going to show you here where it's not tinned. This area is not tinned. and I'm going to show you what lead is like, look now, it looks like it's sticking, but I don't see it, it won't stick, if you heat it, it comes off, it won't stick unless you tin it, okay? I'm going to put it here on the tin surface and the reason for this tip is that you want a flame that will heat a large area at the same time that you heat this entire area, keep it nice and big, when it glows it will be ready to move. keep warming it up keep the area warm Now I take the main paddle it's already prepared heat up a larger area possible test it's not quite ready now I'm being careful to stay within the indented area because it won't stick if you leave that area you can put this lid on however you want, but it has to be hot, the metal has to be hot and shiny, look, I can drip it, I can drip it there, it doesn't matter how you put it on. there because you're going to paddle with the main paddle to smooth it out now I have a new round paddle, you know, we normally do uh I make these paddles half round and flat, now I'm going to go ahead and surface.

With this palette I clean out as much excess as I can. Now the reason I'm

using

the curved paddle is to show you that I can sculpt. I can sculpt with this lead and you can create a pattern when I do my workshops around the country. In fact, all over the world I teach leadership and then have students practice a little with lead. Each of the students practices with lead in each of my classes. I see that you can create a shape and sculpt it as if you were putting icing on it. a cake, but there probably aren't many of you who put frosting on a cake, but anyway you see how you can just sculpt, play with it all you want, try to keep a large area warm, that's very important, now they can move the leadership. so just by taking the paddle and moving it, you can move it like this back and forth, pick it up, move it however you want now every once in a while I look at the paddle and when it's just starting to take the edge, then Go here and I heat up this denim tool and I wipe off the excess lead and pick up a little bit of tallow and now it's refilmed and ready to go again.

You can continue

using

the palette over and over again throughout the day. For a long time when you first learn to spin you keep in mind that you want the torch paddle, the torch paddle, otherwise you burn the paddle, so I've used this paddle over and over again and still no I've burned the end, but you can see how. It takes a little experience, you're not going to just pick this up and smooth it out as smoothly as I'm doing the first time you try it, so it takes a little practice and that's part of learning. every day is a school day we learn to do something every day, no matter what it is, keep it warm every which way now I'm just barely tilting the paddle as I go each way, just tilting it a little bit now that I don't I don't need to so much lead there.

I was just showing you how you can apply it, how you can move it around this Fender just had some little dents here and we could have straightened them out, but this is a demonstration. To show you how I apply the wire, we let it cool for a few minutes and then I brush it again with a new wire brush and then I wash it again and then I wash it quite often with acetone or lacquer thinner and I scrub it and keep it clean all the time and then I'll file it with a Vixen file and before I prime it I'll wash it again with acetone.

You want to keep it clean at all times so that no particles remain. of dirt somehow, it's still a little warm, but I'm going to go ahead and start brushing it. I don't want to put it on while it's too hot, but I'll just force it to cool down a little by rubbing it. Using baking soda and water again, now you can take a Vixen file and you can file the surface with a cross file. Now there is a clear advantage of lead over plastic and that is that you can hit it, you can actually hit it and you are not going to break it if you hit it, if it was plastic, you hit it, you are going to break the plastic and then it will give you big problems when you hit it.

You print and paint it, but I'll show you what I mean by hit. This is an Eastwood bullseye pick, it is a beautiful tool and hammer. Okay, now if you don't have the Bulls that I choose, then you take the hammer and now I read the highlights, the reflections, the light that comes into the surface. Get it so I can see where I am and then you go in and peck it, you have an idea of ​​the length of your handle in the area you want to be so you go in now. I'll show you what I mean, with the file, look, that's the area that's there now.

I just started hitting where I pecked it with the file. I'm going to try to get in here, see the light now. I can't, I can't swing the hammer because of this uh I saw horse, come here, okay, I have the Bulls that I choose and I'm going to use them the same way as if I were using the PE camera, except this shows you where are you going to hit, see? See, the pick comes pretty close to the end and shows me where I'm going to be, so I put this where I want to be and I just squeeze the handle and peck and file and peck and file any low spot, look right there and then file it.

It had a definite low point right there. Look, now it's almost all gone and you can pick, file and metal finish all you want. Okay, now the reason why I say that is always beyond Now you need where I have to apply this lead towards the steel and towards the metal. See if if you remove it and you still have a low spot or a dent that you can't peck out, then you might want to do it. Leave it back in and if you leave it in again you will have to re-tin it now, the file will scratch the metal and take away the tin work so you always want to try to tin more than necessary, let it out and then smooth it out. your edges back on the steel now you can block sand it you can take 8 you can take 80 grit and block sand it it's a good idea to use a respirator but, you know, or you can turn on the fan and blow the filings out, but anyway, sand it with 80 .Now it's a big question all the time.

Can you use plastic on top? Yes, now you can, if you are going to use plastic to fill in little low spots, you may not be able to reach the back to peck at them. that you want to fill in those little tiny spots, so I recommend taking 36, this turns out to be 80, but you take 36 and you scrape out the little holes, the little dents, you scrape them out, you clean them perfectly, you clean them and you rough them out, you scrape them out and then you put the little thin layer of plastic right there and you go ahead and print it again now.

I would wash this with acetone or lacquer thinner just to get any of that little bit of sebum that might get trapped in there while you do that process now. I once saw a guy using motor oil on the cover vanes. Now oil and paint don't mix, but this guy had oil running down his arm. You know, just oil for all this and I don't know how. In the world was I ever going to get that oil out of there to prime or paint it, but I definitely don't recommend any motor oil. Well, I hope this demo has shown you how to do it and how to do it.

It eliminates some of the fears or questions you may have had, so if you know if you want to get the kit, go to Eastwood.com or give them a call and they will sell you that beautiful kit.