Guest blog from Tanner Cordeiro

Cordeiro’s Guest Blog for Nick Vellis

            When crafting such beauty as Nicks “soon to be beauty” 68’ mustang. When you are creating a car from ground up, you need to know a little about what you’re doing, and it just takes some TLC (tender loving care). When creating an older car, you cannot just start ripping off all of the body parts, half the time the parts aren’t even being made for the car you’re working on, it’s an old car. Almost all the older cars that need some type of body work, whether it’s the frame, dints, scratches, humps, bumps, rust, corrosion etc. Typically it takes the right tools and the right technique to be able to smooth out the body and make that car look as amazing as it possibly ever could. Normally when it comes to bad rust issues, you could have to cut out metal, form new metal to weld back into place, and then take a grinder to smooth it out. For dints and dings, normally would pound out the dint with a slide hammer after welding a piece of metal to the part of the dent you’re going to pound out. To finish smoothing out the dents / dings to a complete smooth surface, normally you would use plastic filler called Bondo. People when talking about Bondo they are usually referring to the automotive filler. Bondo is a compound from a resin base resembling putty an a thick liquid hardener. When kept separate, they remain supple. Mixed with one another the compound becomes hard. Upon application the Bondo dries to a nice hard finish, it is marked to be as durable as lead itself! After application you take certain grades of sand paper, to finish and get that smooth surface across the body of your car. When sanding Bondo you can use your eyes for looking at different textures, patterns, or lines, you feel along the Bondo and the body so that you find out when it is smooth. This could take multiple layers of Bondo to get it right, but whatever it takes to make that car look amazing!