From: John De Armond
Newsgroups: rec.outdoors.rv-travel
Subject: Re: Popping dents with dry ice (was Scary Electrical Problem)
Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2000 15:08:14 -0400

Guy reading here wrote:
>
> Reply at the bottom.
>
> <oden666@my-deja.com> wrote in message
> news:8lr8ev$sll$1@nnrp1.deja.com...
> > Where can a guy get dry ice?
> > <removed crap>
>
> Any good ice house will have it. Look in
> the Yellow Pages for your area.

I thought that I should mention a detail as this grand experiment
gets underway.  If you don't know what you're doing with dry ice,
you can pretty much permanently set the ding in the metal because
the cold will cryro-harden it.  You can also raise a cryro-hardened
wrinkle.  Voice of experience.  Playing around, learning about how
this works is good - but do it on scrap sheet metal first!!

For car dents in the steel foil of modern car bodies, the same
effect can be achieved with a heat gun and water ice.  Simply
gradually heat a LARGE AREA around the dent with the heat gun until
a moist finger sizzles a little when applied (but not enough to
blister the paint!!!) and then touch the apex of the ding with ice.
As the dent draws up, quickly rub outward in circles until you get
to the edge of the dent.  Most of the time it takes two or more
cycles of this to completely remove the ding.  And since water ice
isn't cold enough to harden the metal, one can do this without much
risk.  A final burnishing will still be necessary to eliminate all
discontinuities.  The dent-removal guys use very soft backing tools
for this which won't damage the paint.

John