The Basics Of Dent Pulling
Our first lesson today will be on the basics of dent pulling. After all, dent pulling is one of the most challenging and rewarding of all aspects in the body shop. Let’s create a scenario. Grandma just hit the garage again backing out and you’ve got to help her out. Well first of all you give her crap and remind her how good her cookies are. First you’re gonna want to analyze the damage. It’s in a good 2 inches and creased about a foot. With any luck you’ll be able to hammer it out. Open up the trunk and take a look. Find yourself a decent hammer, body hammers are essential but of course anything will work. If the dent is creased your going to need to reach around with a contoured dolly. A hammer and dolly sure work well together in these situations, you may need a helper to do this or your “go-go gadget arm extension”. From the inside of the trunk, begin tapping gently. You’ll want to walk the dent out together. Starting in the middle of the dent is NOT what you want to do. Take a good look at it first. It’s a good rule of thumb to pull the dent out working your way back from the way it went in. When you have the right combination you should hear the hammer hitting the dolly, nice and clear (clean). It takes a bit of practice, but with the right tools you’ll get it. There are a variety of hammer & dolly combinations, so find yourself a cheap set of these, check out my store at Begin Autobody.com The more time you spend doing this the better. Again, just take your time. If the hammer and dolly technique don’t work, grab the biggest hammer you have. No! You certainly will make it worse. An assortment of pry bars can help you out, but only so much. It can be tedious and time consuming, an you’ll need something to pry against. Use caution and take your time. There is no shortcut here, just poke around a bit, it usually helps, if only a little.
That’s not working though? O.K. here’s the secret if you have a few bucks laying around especially if you enjoy doing autobody work and pulling dents. You’ll need to find yourself a stud gun uni-spotter. This is a must have in the shop if people (grandma) keep on hitting the garage. It’s a hand held spot welder that will weld pins to the damaged area. This can be quite fun, but make sure you grab your basic essentials. “SAFETY FIRST“. You need to grind the damaged area down to the bare metal, the pins will just spark if you don’t have a good contact. Be careful of sparks especially near the gas cap door. If the damage is near this then wet a rag with water and shove it in there, just to be safe. Watch what you’re doing, you certainly do not want the grinder where you don’t want it. NOTE: Use duct tape if you have to, a couple pieces here and there will assure you that you won’t cause any extra unnecessary damages to fix while you’re at it.
Alright, back to the Uni-spotter. I’ll assume you know how to use your stud gun if you already own one. For a few bucks if you need one, you may be able to ask the nearest autobody shop near you if you can borrow theirs. They may look at you funny, but oh well, it never hurts to ask. To begin, run a row of pins in the crease about 1 inch apart. Grab the slide hammer and begin pulling, in this case she backed out and hit the garage. You want to then start at the rear of the car where it’s damaged and begin pulling and tapping gently all the way to front. NOTE: When you begin pulling on the dent, take your hammer and tap anything around the dent down, this allows the metal that is streched to come back down where it should be. Always begin pulling from where the dent starts and move along to where it ends, tapping down any high spots along the way. You can do this as long as it takes, you want it as close to the original contour as time allows or humanly possible. Remove the pins with a side cutter pliers. Usually the head of the pins remain on the car. These can be ground off with a hand held grinder. NOTE: Pick up the pins you cut off. They may find their way into your tire 
Okay!!! Great, you should be good to go. Don’t tap any harder than you have to, tap lightly and often. “lightly”. With the uni-spotter put away, your not gonna want to haul it back out again. Tap all the way around the dents (high spots) using the pick side or dove tail side of your favorite body hammer. You need a good hand to feel. Give er a good rub. The use of a rag, or by simply putting a clean cotton glove on will assist you in determining what’s high and what is not.It will be rougher than a cob at this point, but you’re looking for the outies (high spots, nipples). These you do not want. Now it may be time for that hammer and dolly again. NOTE: you’ll be putting a lot of body filler on trying to form your way around high spots or by having to pound them in after each course of body filler. Do your best, it challenges the most advanced autobody tech, but persistence pays off. Are you satisfied? Congratulations! If you did these simple steps thoroughly, you should be about done with this step. Take a breather for now, it’s time for some fresh baked classic grandma cookies.:). “Keep in touch, we’ll bondo it up real soon”.
