1956 buick build

Spent the day mostly going in circles. Managed to get the inner roof frame welded back together, nothing fancy as it is all hidden.
Then I turned my attention to the drip rail......
This thing is going to be the death of me
The one I cut off the car is missing the flange that attaches to the roof frame and has the roof section spot welded to it every half inch. I started to do some trimming to it with plans on reattaching the flange part and splitting all the spot welds but "damn"
So then I got the idea of using the bead roller in conjunction with the sheet metal break to fabricate a new drip rail all together. This had led me into another "well damn"
Using the hemming die set lead to making a real warped and wavy thing that would no way work. So I opted to bend the first 120 degrees then use the closing dies on the bead roller.
This worked well but another problem popped up as the metal break has an issue where it does not keep the same bend radius its whole length.
This causes an error on the edge width of the drip rail when it is hemmed together. This error could usually be adjusted out, but I can't get the one side to adjust in all the way as there is and old braze repair that is limiting its adjustment travel. So oh great! another project to get into...
Well thats my day...how was yours?

 

A lot of restomods remove the drip rails......just depends on the look you're going for.

Best,
K

 

I'll keep them. I like stock bodies and interiors but with modern powertrains.
Never know, might winde up with wire wheels and wide whites before all is done.

 

Pretty simple really, I measure then lay out scribe lines so I know where to position the metal in the bender. This is my old compass that I use for the lay out lines...


Was pretty busy the last couple days working on fixing the roof and drip rail. Wound up doing it differently than planned because I just couldn't roll the edge of the drip rail edge exactly like what's on the car. So I wound up attaching a flanged piece in position and will tim it back then attach the original edge of the drip rail to it after finishing off the roof.


The front section is a pain getting it curved just right. I spent hours on getting it ac close as I can.
Came out really well for having to hammer it out by hand. Have to finish welding it up another day. Had to split and stack some firewood for the next couple days.

 

Well I finally got tired of photobucket sending me notifications about being over the limit, and am working on downloading alot of them.
Ran into a couple of cars I had painted and figured I'd slap them in this thread.

 

At the shows with my dad..

 

Weather has finally turned so I could spray some epoxy, then hit it with some high build primer.
(Evercoat 4:1)
So the worst is over, now things should start progressing more quickly...

 

I've been doing it since I was 15 years old.
Automotive refinishing is a process that requires alot of different skills learned over time.

 

I use the harbor freight cheap ass guns for primer, and a sata for the base clear. I bike I used an airbrush and templates cut from frisk paper for the flames. Just shadow the edge of the templates with the airbrush.
Paint was house of colors candy apple red over red and grey base colors. The bike is featured in Iron works magazine around ??? Shit I forget when. But I have the magazine around here somewhere...

 

@Zapins ,
Here's the "special" tools. After the high build primer goes on a tracer coat is misted on so while you are block sanding things out you can visually see low and high areas like this small dent and a low spot at a body seam.
No magic here, just time patience and alot of beer helps.