JR's 51 Oldsmobile

The next task was to fix the pointy rear corner on the quarter windows. With every other window corner having a nice smooth curve, that pointy corner really bugged me.

Unfortunately there were no spare pieces to use to make the window corner round so, we made the pieces with a hammerform. I made a pattern for the curve by tracing the window opening and then transferred that to a piece of scrap plywood. A router was used to cut the radius on the plywood form. I also cut a second scrap of plywood, with a slightly larger curve, to use as a clamp to hold the metal. Once the metal patch was cut to the general shape needed, I clamped all three pieces together by screwing them down to a wooden bench and then we started hammering.

The first one was made from a scrap of 18 gauge and it took a fair amount of hammering to get into shape. The second one was made from a piece of late model Chevy truck bedside from the scrap pile. That one went much faster. Here's what it looked like before we started trimming it to fit.

Trimmed to fit.

Here it is welded in place. We also made some patches to box in the back side of these pieces.

I also got the door frame and the B-pillar finished up on the driver's side. Between that and the curves at the rear of the quarter windows, the raggedy top chop is just about saved.