I finally got my garage door working in my shed. Now the next problem:
these doors were given to me and there is a panel or two that has
dents in them. I fooled with taping them from behind but to no avail.
Is there a way to get these dents out?

On May 5, 8:20*am, stryped wrote:
I finally got my garage door working in my shed. Now the next problem:
these doors were given to me and there is a panel or two that has
dents in them. I fooled with taping them from behind but to no avail.
Is there a way to get these dents out?

It would help to know if they are steel or aluminum. Does a magnet
stick?
Maybe you could start googling autobody techniques. There's about as
many ways to remove dents as there are to make them...

--Glenn Lyford

stryped fired this volley in news:bba9dfdc-e37b-
:

I finally got my garage door working in my shed. Now the next problem:
these doors were given to me and there is a panel or two that has
dents in them. I fooled with taping them from behind but to no avail.
Is there a way to get these dents out?


Tape won't work. It just covers the dent. G

Instead, try tapping them from behind with mallet and a wooden backer-
block on the face side. Unless you disassemble the door panels, you'll
need a helper.

LLoyd

stryped wrote:
I finally got my garage door working in my shed. Now the next
problem:
these doors were given to me and there is a panel or two that
has
dents in them. I fooled with taping them from behind but to no
avail.
Is there a way to get these dents out?

If your door is flat, Lloyd has spoken. If it is contoured, get
one
of those multifingered molding gauges, jigsaw profiles for each
side of the door and get a
helper to hold one while you pound the other.

Regards,

Edward Hennessey

On May 5, 8:20*am, stryped wrote:
I finally got my garage door working in my shed. Now the next problem:
these doors were given to me and there is a panel or two that has
dents in them. I fooled with taping them from behind but to no avail.
Is there a way to get these dents out?

You need better tape, like the aluminum kind used to patch rust holes
in cars you want to get rid of quickly.

The metal in dents is usually stretched and can't be flattened anyway,
unless you can heat it red hot and hammer from either side.

On Mon, 5 May 2008 09:43:26 -0700 (PDT), Jim Wilkins
wrote:

On May 5, 8:20=A0am, stryped wrote:
I finally got my garage door working in my shed. Now the next problem:
these doors were given to me and there is a panel or two that has
dents in them. I fooled with taping them from behind but to no avail.
Is there a way to get these dents out?

You need better tape, like the aluminum kind used to patch rust holes
in cars you want to get rid of quickly.

The metal in dents is usually stretched and can't be flattened anyway,
unless you can heat it red hot and hammer from either side.
I've seen dents in painted soft steel sheet and aluminum being removed
with just a heat gun and a wet rag. just heat and cool the streched
part. The dents must have a large radius. If you want to tap out the
dents from the back side you should use a soft hammer on the
protruding side and a hard surface to back up the hollow side of the
dent. The soft hammer lets the metal flow back together while a hard
hammer just tends to push the metal.
ERS

On Mon, 05 May 2008 17:44:58 +0000, etpm wrote:

On Mon, 5 May 2008 09:43:26 -0700 (PDT), Jim Wilkins
wrote:

On May 5, 8:20=A0am, stryped wrote:
I finally got my garage door working in my shed. Now the next problem:
these doors were given to me and there is a panel or two that has
dents in them. I fooled with taping them from behind but to no avail.
Is there a way to get these dents out?

You need better tape, like the aluminum kind used to patch rust holes in
cars you want to get rid of quickly.

The metal in dents is usually stretched and can't be flattened anyway,
unless you can heat it red hot and hammer from either side.
I've seen dents in painted soft steel sheet and aluminum being removed
with just a heat gun and a wet rag. just heat and cool the streched
part. The dents must have a large radius. If you want to tap out the
dents from the back side you should use a soft hammer on the protruding
side and a hard surface to back up the hollow side of the dent. The soft
hammer lets the metal flow back together while a hard hammer just tends
to push the metal.
ERS

The idea behind heat shrinking metal is that you get it hot and it (a)
expands and (b) gets weaker. This tends to push the edges in toward the
center. When you hit it with the wet rag it gets strong and pulls the
whole panel in toward the center of the hot spot.

My dad used to take care of wows in large, lightly contoured panels using
an air sander with a dull disk. He'd play the disk over an area to heat
it up just right, and it'd pull in when he was done. I don't remember
any cooling being applied, although it may have been part of the mix.

There are shrinking hammers that draw the metal together when they hit.
There used to be things called "slapping files" that did basically the
same thing, only they looked like files rather than hammers.

I've never thought of the soft-faced hammer trick, the next time I'm
shrinking sheet metal I'll have to give it a try.

No matter what you do, you're not going to end up with a perfectly flat
panel.

--
Tim Wescott
Control systems and communications consulting
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Need to learn how to apply control theory in your embedded system?
"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" by Tim Wescott
Elsevier/Newnes, http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html

On May 5, 6:20*am, stryped wrote:
I finally got my garage door working in my shed. Now the next problem:
these doors were given to me and there is a panel or two that has
dents in them. I fooled with taping them from behind but to no avail.
Is there a way to get these dents out?

Auto body repair manuals have lots on removing dents from sheet metal
panels, check the local library. A skilled craftsman can do it so
there's little evidence left of the crease or dent. The skill
development curve is pretty long, though, and I'm not one of the elite
that can do such. If the dents are small dings, they can be knocked
back and filled with body filler. Creases can be unlocked at the
proper points and flattened out. You need dinging hammers and dolly
blocks to do it and some idea of what to do with them. Big suction
cups can pull out shallow creases, too. It's complicated by the fact
that the metal has stretched and it'll have to be shrinked down at
some point to get a semi-flat surface. The body manuals have all the
procedures for it, you get to experiment. There's a reason that
there's a constant demand for straight body panels from the auto
wrecking yards, replacement is a whole lot easier than unbending
dents.

Stan