For this article we'll discuss the two major techniques of using a body hammer and dolly, you'll have to decide when the best time to use each one is, dollies as with hammers come in a lot of shapes, and it will depend on the kind of work that you perform what you need as far as different shapes.
Obviously if your working with heavier sheet metal, you'd need a heavier dolly, they just kind of go together, that's about all I can tell you about selecting the right tool for this article, we'll get in to that later, that could be an entire article by itself.
For this article we'll discuss the two major techniques of using a body hammer and dolly, you'll have to decide when the best time to use each one is, dollies as with hammers come in a lot of shapes, and it will depend on the kind of work that you perform what you need as far as different shapes.
Obviously if your working with heavier sheet metal, you'd need a heavier dolly, they just kind of go together, that's about all I can tell you about selecting the right tool for this article, we'll get in to that later, that could be an entire article by itself.
The first of the two techniques is called hammer on dolly, pretty self explanatory, you put the dolly right behind the affected area and lightly pound the metal that's directly on the dolly with your flat faced body hammer, and pay close attention I said lightly, if you hit it hard you'll stretch the metal.
If you stretch the metal you'll have to use a whole new technique to fix it, called shrinking, a subject for another article also, so now that your hitting the affected area it should start to relieve the stress in the metal and relax, metal does have a memory, and this is a very good thing, it wants to be fixed.
Give it a few light taps, and then run your hand over the repair area and see if you can still feel the dent, if you can not that's great, your finished with the repair, if you can still feel the dent, you need to pound the metal a bit more, I know it's slow, and repetitive, but it does work.
The next technique is called the hammer off dolly technique, and this is just as it sounds, you do not hit directly on the dolly, you'd hit the metal about ½ inch away from the dolly, make sure that you have mastered the hammer on technique before trying this one, as it is a bit harder to do.
The hammer off dolly technique will push the metal that's directly in front of the body hammer, the force of the hammer is still transferred to the dolly, as a result the dolly will push the metal in a direction opposite of the hammer, if the metal was flat in would be forced in to an "S" shape.
When using the hammer off dolly technique, you'd hit the high spot that sits adjacent to the low pot in the metal, using the dolly to back up the low spot in the metal, to determine if the metal is repaired all you need to do is run your hand over the metal, you should be able to feel it, repeat if you still feel the dent.