How To Hammer And Dolly Sheet Metal

Hold the dolly tight to the panel maximizes the hit a loose hold allows the dolly to bounce reducing how much the metal stretches.

How to hammer and dolly sheet metal. Understanding how metal deforms is the first step toward straightening it. You have to adjust your mind to the concept that when you hammer on sheet metal with a steel hammer onto a steel dolly or anvil that you will expand or increase the surface area by thinning the metal. It s important to do so with caution as today s sheet metal is thinner than it used to be. The hammer and dolly method is probably the easiest repair technique for dents but it requires that you have access to both sides of the panel being repaired.

However newer cars have many areas that do not allow you to use the hammer and dolly method. How you strike the hammer and how you hold the dolly all affects the results of the work. Mark simpson explains the process of using a hammer and dolly set to remove dents and straighten metal. You can also work off the dolly hitting the edge to shape the metal.

Using our body hammers and hand dolly s we make it look brand new again. There are two techniques when using hammer and dolly hammer off dolly and hammer on dolly. Light taps work best for sheet metal work. The idea was that if the hammered metal went up it was being stretched and if it went down it had shrunk.

Position the hammer dolly on the outside of the dent and your body hammer on the inside. Classic car and truck rest. We take an old junk yard chevy tailgate and dismantle it. Using care and finesse he then begins to tap the metal from the other side using the hard steel dolly as a backing plate for the hammer blows.

You also have to grasp the fact that you can reduce the area of sheet metal by thickening it.