Update::
Camping was great. I got home in the early afternoon on Sunday and after taking the wife to dinner for Mothers Day I found some time afterwards to work on the truck.
I had originally removed a section of the firewall thinking I only needed to repair that corner of the cowl. Well things were worse than previously thought so I had to remove the entire front (firewall, Cowl, Kick panels, and all). One good thing about doing it this way is I can spread the parts out to weld them better...
This is where I started. Aligned the section I removed to where it was originally. Clamped it in place and used the hammer and dolly to make sure the edges were all ligned up before spot welding.
Spot welded it every 6" or so to get it all in place and not to create too much heat that would warp the panel and cause more bodywork. (Lower half)
Upper half of the firewall spot welded
I continued spot welding skipping around till I filled it completely from top to bottom. Im afraid that if I would have run a bead it would surely have warped. This worked well. It wasnt pretty before grinding flat and took longer but it's the nice looking outcome we are looking for right?
Then using angle grinder with a 50 grit ROLOC and lots of patience to "only grind the welds" I smoothed out the spot welds. (Lower half)
All ground flat.
Attachment 460838