How to do lead loading, soft soldering on car bodywork, Tips and Tricks #5

hi this is true and welcome to my blog welcome to another episode of tips and tricks it's blinking freezing anyway I thought I'd give a letter loading tutorial a crack as a few people have requested it most namely my buddy Andrew Thomas Andrew thank you very much for help over the last few years so this is a tutorial for yourself and for those who requested it so LED loading or soft soled ring as it's sometimes referred to us it's a bit of a throwback to the past traditionally car-bodies we made they've put together spot welded welded or braised across the joints and then they put led across afterwards to make it into a continuation so the one panel flowed into the other and you couldn't see the joints it was then of course adopted by the accident crash repair trade before fillers were about to use as a filler and also to aid repair for rest repairs I'm sure it was used in plenty of cars as a bond to the map if you had a hole in it you could probably bridge the hole with lead and foil it away and then a of course it sort of acted a little bit like how people use or used to use fiberglass pastes not so much anymore because modern vehicles just don't rust like they used to so I still think it has its place in the repair trade certainly in the classic car repair trade because it's so useful sealing things up there are a few considerations when using it I it gets everything very hot so anything you would have put on the inside of the panel to seal it up to see little primary of course all gonna get burnt off I'll talk about these considerations more at the end of the video so here we are I've got this old van I'm restoring and classic case with me it's sort of borderline shall I cut the bottom of the door off and replaced the whole lower section of the door which I could have done across there and perhaps I should have done this because the door was so badly damaged anyway but the bottom of the door looks so solid and it is quite solid half an earth a bit of rot in this corner which have welded up and it's going to take me a couple of days to make a bottom of the door up properly weld it in because you've got these funny edges coming down if I was just to whirled it into that corner there you know damn well you're gonna have rust all erupting along this corner that's some stage that's where it's going to fail or fail along the back edge the other issue I've got with this door as well is it's enclosed it's completely enclosed there's a solid skin all the way on the inside of the panel as well as the outside I've got these drain holes which I can use as a good access point to spray lots of wax oil in when I finished so if you've come to the decision that you actually want to use lead to seal up a welded area so you've wanted a little puffed panel in and it was quite rusty and the metal is thinning around it and you've welded it in you know there's gonna be a few pinholes in it and you can get to it from behind with a wax oil gun and you've decide that you want to seal it up with some lead and you haven't Prime in it then what you can do is go ahead and do that one consideration you really should think about doing is making that repair area a little bit lower than the than the actual outer profile that the panels going to be at the end because if you so say you've well did your patch panel and you've got it absolutely perfect there's nowhere for the LED to go the LEDs just gonna sit on the outside and you're gonna file a whole lot off on what you really want to end up is you want to end up with a nice little layer of lead sort of a millimeter or perhaps a bit more couple of millimeters of lead over the area which will ensure that it's sealed up that entire area so you may need to tap in the repair area or if you're welding in then very often of course the water creates shrinkage that you can then utilize the shrank area to fill with lead so that's something else that's quite an important tip that you need to think about when you're doing it don't you know if you're gonna use lead you don't want a perfect flat panel you need it to be slightly lower where your leaded areas going to be so this is the kit we're gonna need got some lead paint please take note all this stuff very very toxic lead never ever Sunday never Sun glad certainly not so that you're gonna get it into the atmosphere so there's our lead paint which is powdered lead and flux mixed together and we've got our stick of lead body files so I've got my adjustable body foil and a little tick a little tick little tip mr. Luigi an Italian panel beater I used to work with unfortunately passed away now he showed me this great tip because he used to use therefore everything just get a body file heat it up with an oxygen acetylene torch and then you can bend it into that shape this is far more useful than you would believe or shaping lead so that's a little tip for you probably would have seen before and then to Pat to the lead into shape while it's still molten we've got a maple puddle and then what we use to stop the lead from sticking and burning the puddle is a product called tallow this is tallow and it's used mainly in the Electrical industry they lubricate cables when they're pulling them through a conduit so this red paint it will dry out over time and with a few spots of water you can see make it quite liquid again so with a suitable brush brush the area that you want tinned and make sure that you go past the area that you intend to deploy led to because if you're not entirely covered then the net won't stick okay do okay so with a decent blow lamp or option acetylene torch like I'm using here a bit more heat should be out a wall ready see it turning see they let melt and I have eight see my little beads falling quite quickly so I'm going to just take the moisture out of flux first it'll fit a bit where there's a bit of moisture in it that's it they're in a warmer area folks is pretty corrosive so we want to get enough heat into it to activate all the flux to sort of burn it off really [Music] well it's early night so I've just got a piece of tissue here big piece of tissues and what we're going to do is just wipe it down clean it like so okay clean nuts come up instantly so heat again [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] there we go it's all tinder ready there's a black Harry here could have probably been with a bit more flux but I'm not gonna worry about too much because it's not in the legend area I just really want to concentrate on this corner so we got a stick of solder or flame need to start warming things up so what you need to do is warm the sticker just sort of a last inch or so just keep applying the heat what will happen is and let it become what's called buttery what see what I mean in a second we're just heating yeah we're not looking to melt anything in this stage so you get your net to the buttery stage at the same time it needs to be just keeping your panel temperature up as well so there's the LED on the panel is still molten so we get our LEDs in the buttery stage and then we ditch a piece of legend like that you gotta let on the surface don't worry about what it looks like at this stage and it's absolutely horrific I know so we'll get it to the country stage again yes just starting to fold andros own way feed the panel a little bit so easy to go over the top of this and end up with it all on the floor well just leave like that that's more than enough in that area I always said if I get some reversible here see if we can get it to stick in nicely there you go perfect that's the sort of result you want perfect so next stage make a puddle tallow ever you do don't get too much tallow on the girl you really want enough just to sort of to lightly dump in the end and the problem we've having too much tallow on the block is that the tallow will mix in with a LED and you'll end up with little channels of tallow through the LEDs which can go back to the steel and if things start resting underneath it will creep up through those channels you need to warm things up again on the panel now basically you cut it into shape [Music] Oh so this is what I've ended up with I know it doesn't look like a masterpiece what we need to do is we're applying the filler like we were to polyester filler so we've put it in as good as we possibly can using the puddle but without going over the top because what we're going to do next is file the lead off anyway but you want to get it quite accurate so that you haven't used too much lead or you haven't you know put enough in because you only really get one hit of this as far as I'm concerned because as soon as you start foiling it you're going to start finding steel quite quickly ie the panel underneath any high spots are going to come up and as soon as you go over that with a file you're going to remove any of the tinned steel which means that you cannot then reapply the lead because it's not tinned anymore you've got to start heating things up and reapplying the lead paste and that doesn't ever really work so we're taking it as far as I want to go anywhere you can see I've got the basic shape of the panel back again it's a bit of rough down here what I try to do is I've tried to let in that skin with the other skin underneath sort of merge the two in together so it's sealed that seam as well I'm going to seal it all along anyway with some polyurethane after I've Prime in it so not that important do what I can so the next stage is to file this back into some kind of shape so I used my mr. Luigi file nice thing about this is you can flip over the other way and something you're doing like this and pull the file towards you see you've got facility as well as a traditional filing like ah that's why it works so well this or reverse curved wolfhard nicely back to shape quite pleased with the results could always be better but with the processes I'm going to do next ie I'm going to epoxy Prime the whole panel and then it will be filled anyway with glazing putty which I'll probably do a bit of a promotional at some stage this sharp edge here I've just blunted it off so if you've got any sharp edges leave those to last always leave your sharp edges in even if they're quite rounded that's another tip and what that does is it ensures the correct profile of the panel that's going up to it if you've got a straight sharp edge there's nice and crisp and you leave it right to the end like that it will ensure that the panels need a net to it are indeed true and flat and going in the right direction so that's another tip that a lot of people overlook they try and start putting this shape in straightaway always leave your edges to last something else you can use which is quite useful for LED work is a safe edge razor blades and you can use this pellet blending your edges and its grapes off any old LED to paint and the flux and stuff might aren't listed in there the other thing I found really useful is an old wood chisel sharpener which is all you can actually carve the LED out really really well so at this stage now what I will do now this is good enough I'm happy with this for wine doing and what I'm going to do is I'm going to get a scotch brite red pad which I should have in my hand and I haven't unbuckle ously what appears yeah red pad something like this or meaning us different brand it's a bit more worn out that one so I'm going to get something like this you could use an old brillo pad or warrior wall or something art and a bit of washing-up liquid on it get it wet don't do this dry and really give it a good clean and then that'll ensure that you've got rid of any residue tallow or flux or let paint whatever this going to be left on the surface that's going to cause a corrosion issue or a paint issue at a later stage so ya live loli very useful product to use I think you really do need to make some careful considerations before deciding to use LED for use as a lead filler or to see a panel up and it's kind of like what I was hinting at the start of the video you really need to think about what you're gonna put behind it or if you know something's going to be LED loaded in that area say it's a couple of new panel sections you're welded in and traditionally it would have been LED filled then you're gonna want to let fill it again to keep things right as they should be then you may want to make the consideration of not primary it beforehand and if you can actually gain access to the rear of the panel because this is where all the issues start because cars really do rust from the inside out and other considerations you need to make when you're thinking about using this kind of product or when you're doing a restoration because there's so many variables that you know everybody wants a kind of one-stop solution for all eventualities and that isn't the case because you could have a restoration that could take a couple of years to do or a couple of days later it could be in the paint shop and if you've got this difference in time then your approach is going to be very much different because if something's going to be exposed to a cold environment a cold atmosphere for two years then you really need to be making some kind of reservations for some kind of rust protection on the internal parts of the vehicle on the insides of the panels because if it's in an unheated workshop and it's gonna be left there for a long long time then it's gonna be open to get very cold and very damp and things are going to start going rusty quite quickly whereas you know if you know you're gonna have the thing painted in a couple of days you just got a small repairable panel a couple of days later gonna be in the paint shop then you don't got to be quite too worried about what's going on inside because you know that well you know a couple of days later we're gonna be flashing the wax or going around in there not a problem whereas something that's going to be longer-term then you know you may not need to think about maybe prior minute in advance or sealing up in advance or something I think you get what I'm saying anyway anyway thanks very much for watching if you've got any requests like I say thanks very much she comments and emails and any more requests just feel free to ask if you're unsure about anything lot gets lost in translation with these videos I realize that I do my best try key things straightforward and basic and then I can build in more complex things in the future we've got some more videos coming up that I've already kind of shot so we're going to do my compressor dryer some door skin repairs and a few other fixes as well I have been requested to do a lot of kind of how I shape panels how I make panels if quite a few people have asked me about that and I'm actually going to be making at like a hammer formed panel sim stage in the next couple of months so I'm kind of saving myself for that because I could do a live demonstration on my panel I'm gonna make where I haven't formed panels over hardwood plywood very useful technique to to learn about so I look forward to seeing you in the next video which would be the compressor dryer and the hammer form we want to probably come in a couple of months time okay so catch you in the next video bye for now [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: Trev's Blog

Views: 167,235

Keywords: bodywork, panel, beating, lead, loading, filler, welding

Id: n-sciCiNNU8

Length: 30min 21sec (1821 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 05 2019