Now that you’ve fixed all the rusted areas, and pulled the dents back to their original position, you can begin the smoothing out of the body work areas, this will be done using body filler, the brand that I use is Ever coat Rage, this has always worked well for me, you can get any of the products that you need to do the job at your local auto paint supply house, if you have any questions about the products that you need, be sure to ask the people at you’re local supply house, as they are a fountain of knowledge when it come to their products. Now to begin the filling process, I will start by making a couple of things clear, the main thing that you need to be aware of is the fact that on all the areas that you plan on adding filler to, they will need to be ground with 36 grit paper on an air grinder, I prefer a 5” air grinder to perform this task, which you can buy a your local tool store, ok now that we have that taken care of, you should never fill a dent with more then 1/8 – ¼ of an inch of filler, as this will usually cause the filler to fall out of the car at a later date, these are the two major warnings that I will give you on this subject. So just think about it, use the stinger to get it as close to flat and perfect as you can, this will take some time, so just do yourself a favor and spend the time to get this right, if you want a quality body repair job on you’re car, you’ll have to spread the filler with plastic filler spreaders, you can also get these at you’re local paint supplier, you’ll also need something to mix the filler on, and you can just use anything that you have laying around for this, or you can purchase a mixing board from you’re local paint supplier. Start by mixing a portion of filler about the size of a golf ball, the filler will harden very fast, usually in about 5 minutes in a hot area, a little longer in a cold climate, after you’ve put the filler on you’re mixing board then you’ll add the hardener to it, and be very careful here, you only need a strip about ¼ inch long in a golf ball size portion of filler, if you use more it will harden before you even get to spread it on the car. Now that you have you’re filler mixed and ready to go, you can spread it on the areas that need to be smoothed out, after you spread the filler you’ll need to let it harden for a few minutes before you can sand it, to check the hardness of the filler I usually stick the corner of a razor blade in the filled area, I don’t let the filler harden all the way before I sand it, this makes the sanding process a lot easier, sand the filler just before it gets hard, using 36 – 40 grit file board paper on a air file, you can also purchase an air file at you’re local tool store, when you use an air file, you want to keep in moving sideways across the area that you have filled, do not ever stop and linger in on area, it must always be in motion.
After you have finished this process, you will repeat it again to finish filling the area that you working on, after you’ve finished with the 36 – 40 grit paper, to t point where you think that it’s beginning to feel smooth, you’ll need to switch to 80 grit sand paper on the file board, I would suggest that you use a hand file board for this stage of sanding, after you finish with the 80 grit sand paper, you’ll need to spread some metal glaze, this is a specialized filler that is designed to remove small waves, ripples, and scratches from the filler, you’ll need to mix this on a mixing board also, but you don’t need a golf ball sized portion of this, just enough to go over the area that you filled one time, and with this filler you do need to let it harden all the way before you sand it, when you sand the glaze you can start with 80 grit paper, and about half way through the sanding process on the glaze, you’ll want to switch to 180 grit sand paper for the finish sanding process, to remove all the 80 grit scratches from the filler. I know I said that this would be a two part article, but it may extend to four parts.