Mark Simpson

Using a Heat Gun to Remove Old Bondo

Mark Simpson
Duration:   2  mins

Description

When stripping down old panels for restoration, it’s not uncommon to discover bondo hidden beneath that shiny coat of paint. Never trust old filler as the previous owner may have taken a few shortcuts in preparing the surface for paint. Sanding old filler can send a plume of dust throughout the shop, but using a heat gun instead can make short work of removing old filler without all the dust.

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2 Responses to “Using a Heat Gun to Remove Old Bondo”

  1. frank

    unable to receive

  2. Terry Welch

    Be professional, while this is good for removal. Bondo is the trade name, this is plastic body filler.

When working on classic cars, its not that uncommon, to actually run into old work, you know, places where Bondo or, or even lead have been added to the car over the years and, you know, you don't know, how well that Bondo, how the well the surface was prepared underneath that Bondo. So, you don't want to just leave it, if you run into a case where you are restoring a car, you find some Bondo, don't leave it because you don't know how good that adhesion is to that metal, you don't know how exactly it was prepared, so its a good idea to pull it out out. You can sand it, if you, you go at like here, on this demonstration hood we have. If we go at this with a sander or grinder, we're going to send a cloud of Bondo dust all over the shop and, and you know, then we'll be cleaning that up for weeks. You can use chemicals, strippers but that takes, it takes really a lot of time, because the chemical or paint stripper will only go so deep into Bondo and you'll end up having to make multiple coats and everything else. So, another means to really get the job done, without making too big of a mess, is just to use a heat gun. And you don't want to get the metal so hot, that you know, you're, you're warping the metal, but you do want to soften up the plastic and basically Bondo is just plastic dust in a resin... So, you want to soften it up, so we can scrap it off, if we just try it on, on, on Bondo that's not warmed up, you can see, you don't, you never get a bite, So, with a heat gun... We can get the bulk of the Bondo removed and just come back... and there, use a little bit of sand paper and clean it up. .
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