Panel Beatin'

 The photo's not the best - took it with my cheapie flip phone. I didn't have the camera in the shop, it was getting late and I didn't want to walk up to the shack and back again. The phone camera decides if the flash comes on or not. The photo would have been better without the flash - there's plenty of light in the shop. I don't know if there's a way to over-ride that or not but as little as I use the camera function, probably not worth looking in to.

Anyway, the photo shows some progress on the grill shell. The original plan was to make the top section out of one piece. However, there's no way that was going to happen. I got the middle section fitting the buck fairly nicely but couldn't bring the side in without a big wrinkle forming along the bottom edge. After wrestling with it a bit I decided to cut the corner off, fit both pieces to the buck and weld them back together. I was surprised by the amount I had to cut off the corner piece to splice it back in. There's no way I was ever going to make it work without cutting the corner off. As it was, I had to shrink the piss out of the edge of the center section to get it to lay down. Once I did that all I had to do was file the edge, slip the corner piece under the center section, mark it, cut it and weld it. I'm going to try and get the other corner taken care of today. 

I'm going to have a ton of planishing to do after I get second side fit up. I've got a pneumatic planishing hammer but I've only used it a couple of times and then with only limited success. Since I'm going to have a lot of planishing on the top section of the grill shell and probably a bunch more when I get to the boat tail, might be a good time to see what I can do with it. 

I watched a few videos at Proshaper.com to get some technical advice and some inspiration the last couple of days. I'd like to make the form for the superleggera and head out to Massachusetts to learn how the big boys do it. If I keep farting around on my own, I imagine I'll get done what I need, but it will take me a lot longer than a pro. Big learning curve here but I knew the job was dangerous when I took it.