Posted by Jeff in San Diego on Thursday, October 11, 2007 at 03:38:32 :
In Reply to: Repairing holes in bed sides? posted by Roger in La on Wednesday, October 10, 2007 at 22:46:57 :
Here's a technique you can experiment with. It is useful for filling small holes on big flat panels where there is a danger of oil canning or warping the panel. Helps if you have experience with autobody soldering or electronics soldering. I used it to fill the 10 or so holes in a 92 Dodge truck tailgate where the red plastic piece attached and I didn't want the red color on the truck anymore. I could have mig welded, but wanted to try out this technique.
Use a piece of copper plate no thicker than the surrounding metal and cut it with sheet metal shears so it matches and just fills the hole to be plugged. Use a sheet metal screw (or deck screw) tapped into the copper piece as a handle to hold the copper as a plug in the hole to be filled. While one person holds the copper plug in place, another person lead solders the perimeter around the copper plug and bare metal. Let it cool and remove the sheet metal screw from the copper piece. You are left with a copper plug that has a small pinhold in the middle left over from the sheet metal screw. If you are good, you can reheat and solder the pinhole without remelting the rest of the solder and watching your copper plug fall out. Otherwise, use glazing compound, then sand to make it level. Did this about 5 years ago and have had no problems. Haven't seen any problems with all the dissimilar metals (iron, lead, tin, copper).
An electronics sized soldering iron might not be big enough, the surrounding metal dissipates the heat too fast. I used a large autobody solder gun, but you might get away with preheating using a hot air gun or propane torch.
Whereever you can find a copper backing plate should also have thin copper sheets to use as patching material.
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