Bob,
Many years ago I took a couple of A&P (Airframe & Powerplant) classes.
Not enough to become an A&P mechanic but enough to become dangerous.
Our teacher (a certified A&P) told us a story about a body man who
"body-worked" the hail damaged aluminum on his airplane to beautiful
straightness. During the subsequent FAA inspection he proudly described
what he did to the FAA rep and the FAA rep promptly condemned the airframe
as no longer being airworthy. The moral was that working the aluminum as a
bodyman would either work hardened it making it more prone to catastrophic
failure or weakened it (I can't remember which). Based on this I'd say you
shouldn't "body-work" your aluminum panels. Of course, I could just be
amazingly full of it and worthy of being ignored.
As far as I can recall, the "proper" repair was replacing the amaged
panels (drilling out rivets and riveting in new panels).
Truth to be told, I'm jealous of you being able to own a part of an
airplane - right now I can't even get the time or money to rent!
Mark Watson
1956 Daimler Regency '104' - long term project
1965 Ford Falcon - basically stock daily driver
various other transportation modules
>An airplane I part own needs some "body work." It's painted with
>Imron that's probably about 10 years old. Anybody know if a dent
>could be gently pounded-out without cracking the paint?
>
>TIA,
>bs
>********************************************
>Bob Spidell San Jose, CA bspidell@pacbell.net
>'67 Austin-Healey 3000 '56 Austin-Healey 100M
>********************************************
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