When you think about the skills a fabricator has, you think about welding and bending and drilling and making complex things for whatever the project may be. Usually that involves welding, machining, forming, designing, or several of a long list of other skills. But perhaps the greatest skill a fabricator brings to the table is the ability to deconstruct the finished product that they are trying to build. I say deconstruct because often we look at a part that we are trying to rebuild or build bigger and better, and see it in its entirety when in fact building it will require making each part and then making those parts into one. Such is often the case when repair rusted sheetmetal in cars. Very rarely is the piece just a flat piece of steel. Most often it is several pieces, or several shapes, or both. Building those pieces at home, when they were originally stamped on very large equipment, means thinking about how to make several smaller pieces into one large component.

In this video from Urchfab that is exactly what he does for the repair of the firewall, floors, and toe boards in the Ford 100E he calls the Mongrel.

Check it out.