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It really isn't that hard to do body work, you just have to have a lot of patience and get some books from the library. I'm no master and I tend to use more filler than a pro would because I can't ding dents up flush and even, but I can get an acceptable(at least to me) job done. The tools I use are from the cheapy Chinese body and fender set that I got for $15 and worked over(polished, mostly). I can't see spending $100 on a pro's dinging hammer or $50 on a dolly block at my current level of skill. You can certainly get good results from about $50 worth of tools and a lot of time. A good acetylene torch outfit will help, but it's not a must for starting out. You've certainly got more a stake in the final job than some body shop jockey and more of an idea what you want. If it doesn't turn out the way you like, chalk it up to experience and start again after figuring out where it went wrong. About the only way to learn how is on an actual project. My choices were to learn how to do it myself or do without(low funds for that stuff). I know what you mean about surprises, I stripped the paint off the left front fender that the headlight trim ring had always fit oddly on and found out why. The bucket had gotten pushed back in at some time and whoever "fixed" it had just built the thing up with body filler and slapped some paint on. I had no means at the time to get that fixed, now that I have a torch available, I'm going to try getting it corrected. At the time, I ended up getting another fender off a wreck and straightening it out. It's now got salt rot in the seams a couple of years afterwards, so it's back to the original. No rust on it, just that headlight bucket. On Tue, 20 Oct 1998 17:45:50 -0400, you wrote: >Mike, I know exactly how you feel. My squareback spent nearly a year in >the body (butcher) shop, and I'm totally dissatisfied with the work. >When I was looking for the torsion bar covers to send you, I happened to >glance at mine on the squareback (still sitting in pieces in my garage, >until I figure out what to do next), and noticed that my left rear >fender doesn't have a torsion bar cover anymore. Reached up under the >fender and found a big blob of Bondo... It also used to have more >chrome trim holes (no, I did NOT want those filled!). Makes me think >that learning how to do bodywork myself couldn't be nearly as much of a >pain in the a** as dealing with someone else's low quality standards has >proven to be. > >Jake Kooser > >------------------------------------------------------------------- >List info at http://www.vwtype3.org/list or mailto:help@vwtype3.org