Hammering away on right tail light

Last week I cut out the pieces that will form the lower edge of the right tail light flange. Today was all about getting them to curve to match the body. Unfortunately I forgot to bring my camera so I cannot show you how nicely they turned out.

I began with the bottom half. Mostly it needs to curve away to the right. The challenge is that it also has to curve up a little in the same place. I did the first curve with the shrinker on the folded edge that will be the bottom of the Z bend. This has always worked well even with the relatively thick sheet metal I am using. In no time at all I had the patch aligning nicely with the curve in the panel, at least what is left of it. I was hoping I could get the upward curve with the stretcher. Previously it had been much less effective than the shrinker, and this time was no different. Part of the problem was that these tools flatten the work, the so stretcher was undoing the curve created by the shrinker. I got around that by hammering. Lots and lots of hammering. To save the curve I used a curved dolly clamped in the vise and a curve-faced hammer or a flat-faced hammer.

The upper half was the opposite -- the same edge needed to be stretched. This took a little longer but even so went very smoothly. The last thing I did was grind off the mating edges to bring the setback to 5/16 in. I need a clever, quick, fool-proof way to check it, as using my machinist's ruler was too clumsy. I never did get around to bending the upper half upward at the outside corner. The will require shrinking the inner edge, and before doing that it needs to be trimmed.

Next week I'll take so starting pictures, which will show how things ended up today.

Before leaving I sanded the places I painted last week with etching primer and gave them a coat of sanding primer. I decided to use brown, to differentiate the black layer. I was surprised that the paint came out sputtery and with lots of grit, like spaying old style lacquer primer too thick. We'll see next week how much adhesion I got. I suppose the can was old.