Auto Body tools.....Dagger, Eastwood, Horrible Frt

[F Bill]

http://www.daggertools.com/34m5/body-hammers-dollies.html

Here's a link to a website selling decent auto body repair tools, like hammers, dollies, etc. �The metalshaping guys all speak highly of their stuff. I have seen some of it and can say it is pretty good stuff for the money.

Nothing beats a nice old Fairmount or Snap On hammer but finding one of those is hit and miss at the local used tool stores, as you are much more likely to find some tiawanese junk instead.

WHen you are looking at hammers and dolliess you want to see nice, uniform curvature to the surfaces. The cheap stuff tends to have concave spots in them or ripply surfaces, or they are more like ball pein hammers instead of having a nice slight curvature. The hitting surfaces should be highly polished so as to not transfer a rough finish to the metal you are trying to bump.

You can make your own dollies out of heavy chunks of steel you may have in your shop already. Old RR track sections also have many uses in straightening panels. If you have access to a piece and can get a 3-4 inch length sawed off smoothly you will find many uses for it. Even flat chunks of thick steel can be used as dollies, altho putting a slight crown in the working surfaces might help out if you use it for any crowned surface.

[F Bill]

I just got an email from Eastwood offering FAIRMOUNT hammers for a great price.. Dunno if it is just a promotional price or not, but the hammers LOOK like the old Fairmounts I have picked up here and there..

Fairmount I suspect may have made the Snap On line �of body hammers, as they look identical. In any case they are well balanced, polished nicely, and can do a great job of tin bumping.

Eastwood also sells Martin hammers and dollies, I've heard good things about them too.

Dagger's stuff is roughly equivalent to all the ones mentioned above, and shopping by price point may be the best thing to do with three good brands to choose from.

A nice long pick hammer with a universal dolly will do most of the work I get involved in. All the rest of the tools have places where they are the best for the job, but you can get away just having a few hammers and a couple of dollies.

I have heard the Chinese Freight people still have a body tool set that is dirt cheap but they are pretty soft and need reshaping often. Last store I stopped at only had the door skin bumping set, which might be OK for a hobbyist.

[F Bill]

Ok guys, I promised a report... The eastwood box showed up today. I am slightly underwhelmed.

The hammer is pretty decent. I ordered the 14317 Curved cross chisel hammer with the wooden handle. It is pretty nicely finished, has typical imported paint that looks very nice..The handle has a good straight grain, and is stamped genuine hickory, which is a plus. THe grain is a little coarser than I like to see in a hammer handle but it should do fine for a body hammer.The handle is noticeably thinner than comparable Snap On hammers, to the point of being slightly uncomfortable. A nice thick layer of tape or a piece of rubber heater hose will fix that.



I checked the head profile with a straightedge and it has that nice convex shape to it in all directions I like to see. Often cheap tools are curved in only one direction, and instead of having a point contact they have a line of contact, which doesn't work well for most instances. The logo is painted on, and the actual shape of the head is very reminiscent of the original Fairmont line, but the round head of the hammer is slightly thicker than a Snap on or the original Fairmounts. �Hardness appears to be somewhat soft, I was easily able to ding it with the dolly I got.


 ï¿½ The other end of the hammer is of limited usefulness as supplied. It is not polished, or finished in any way, just a sharp, flat edge as forged. Most times one would want a flat end like that to definie a character line or create a bending line in a panel,you need a nice smooth rounded line type of contact. This as supplied would put square dents in your metal. 2 minutes with a flap wheel on a grinder will make it usable. I'm surprised they didn't go to the trouble at the factory. All in all a good hammer for your $19.95 on sale.

The post dolly I got was nice and heavy but....Whoever did the final finishing on it sanded it on a belt sander and only got a curve going in one direction. At the price, it was disappopinting to see. I probably will use it, but it wasn't what I hoped for.

Both hammer and dolly could use a little bit of fine finishing, the edge of both needs a little softening of the profile to avoid putting extra dents in your panels.
And yes, Both are from overseas, but not China. Taiwan was the maker this time. A step above most Chinese tools. More on that in the next post.

[F Bill]

Well, previously I mentioned I couldn't find the Horrible Fright Auto body toolkit that Jonathan has on our main page in his tool section. He had mentioned it was pretty good, and priced at $15 or so. �Well... that was a while ago. �Now the kit goes for $39.95 and it is a rip off. None of the tools were finished correctly for body work. All had flat curves, not the good compound curve you need. And it was made to be photographed in the box. Like so many of the Harbor Freight items, it is actually smaller than you are used to. Everything in the box is 7/8 Scale. I guess Smokey Yunicks Chevelle must have made quite the impression on their designers, �cause it is just perfect how everything is to scale modelled after the good old American tools we used to have.

And get this.....Dollies need heft to work well. So what do these geniuses do??? They take "extra" weight out of the parts of the dollies you don't see in the catalog pictures. The heel dolly is the first hollowed out heel dolly I have ever seen. �DUH!!! You need that metal to keep the dolly from moving when you do a hammer off dolly hit! So you are going to need to work harder with these to do the same work. And the flat edges of the heel dolly were far from flat, so it was more curved than would be useful for straightening the 90 degree flanges one usually works on with a heel dolly. I often use my other heel dolly and a wooden mallet to get nice straight flanges on stuff, this will make wavy flanges at best.

When I get some extra time I will shoot some pics of these "tools".

I'd go for the Eastwood Taiwanese Fairmounts instead of wasting time on the HF kit at $40 for the kit. It would work in a pinch but if you want to learn the proper way of metal bumping they will fight you. A good metal man can use creek rocks and a ball peen to repair a Rolls Royce but us mere peons need a little better tool to achieve the same thing. �Honestly if you buy some flea market quality hammers for a few bucks and spend some time with your grinder and flap wheels you could make better tools pretty easily.

If you are reading this browsing new posts, you might want to click on the thread, I updated my review of the Eastwood  "Fairmount" hammers when they showed up today. It is a mixed review.