[MARTINSR]

"Basics of Basics" How to feel your bodywork
By Brian Martin


The skill of feeling your body work, or even feeling the panel before you start, is a part of the repair just as much as the blocking with sandpaper. If you don't feel it properly, how good is the blocking you are doing? If you can't feel a high spot, how are you going to remove it?

I have seen (every day) guys feeling bodywork like in photo number 1. I can't grasp how in the world you can feel anything this way, other than a tiny flaw. Don't do this, ever. If someone has somehow dug out the skills to do it this way and they do good work, more power to them, but learn to feel it standing up rubbing it in a long flat motion.

Photo number 2 shows how I use my hand to feel from my fingertip to the bottom of my palm. If you run your hand over a low or high spot using your whole hand you feel it much better. It's like using a longer straight edge, a straight edge that's two inches long isn't going to work as good as one 7 or 8 inches long right?

Photos 3 and 4 show you how to feel a dent: standing to the side and sliding my hand over the area from end to end.

If you wanted to see high or low spots in a panel you would look "down" it like photo number 5 right? That is how you need to feel it too! Your eyes and your hands work together, as long as you don't "see what you want to see" because then you will "feel what you want to feel" which is another part of feeling your work.

When you feel your work you have to WANT to find an error. If you don't want to find one, you won't. It's just how our brains work. Use it to your advantage with your wife, look for the good stuff and that is all you will see. That isn't a joke; that is a life lesson. But with your bodywork you have to WANT to find something, you have to be thrilled to find something. If you are, you will, and you will correct it before it's too late. If you don't want to find something, you won't, and you will be sanding off primer and re-filling it with body filler. OR you will be expecting your primer to do more than you should. You don't want to ask your primer to do more than it can, that is a recipe for disaster on many levels. Your primer is just to fill scratches, and extremely mild imperfections. The more you correct before you prime, the better.

On that note, don't even think of leaving your body filler in anything coarser than 120-grit paper. That is the very, very coarsest paper you would ever want to leave filler in, I go to 180 most every time. This is for a few different reasons, one being the primer isn't asked to do too much. But on the subject of feeling your work, the finer the paper the better you can feel highs and lows. The coarse paper leaves scratches that camouflage flaws in the filler! You could be rubbing your hand over a high or low spot and not feel it because of the scratches. Where with the fine sandpaper it's more like feeling a painted surface. This also goes for how you see it too, if it's sanded with finer paper you can see the flaws easier than if it was sanded with coarse paper. This doesn't mean you only sand your filler with 180-- for that info you need to read the "Basics of Basics" on Body filler.

A tip that often works for me is to close your eyes as you are feeling it. Also, to use a rag or paper towel under your hand so that you don’t feel the differences in texture from filler to paint or bare metal.

Now change how you feel your work, and go out and find some flaws to fix and make your body work better!