Saw a guy use a paint stir stick to check panel gaps and it actually worked

I was at a shop over in Arlington last week picking up some supplies and overheard this older guy telling a younger tech to grab a paint stir stick to check his gap alignment. At first I thought he was joking but he actually ran it along the door edge and showed how the stick catches on high spots way better than just eyeballing it. I tried it on a fender I was blocking out yesterday and man it really does show you where the tape is off or where your filler is too thick. It's not some fancy tool just a 5 cent piece of wood but it saved me from having to recoat a panel. I usually use those cheap plastic gap gauges but this felt faster for rough checking. Has anyone else got a weird trick like that they use for alignment?

2 comments

2 Comments

finley93925d ago

That paint stick trick is genius, I'd never thought of it. I had a 67 Mustang hood that was fighting me for like an hour, gaps all over the place. I grabbed a wooden ruler from my toolbox and ran it along the edge and it instantly caught on this spot where I'd overlapped my filler too much. I ended up using it to scribe a line on the panel and sanded down to it and the fit was super consistent after that. Feels like one of those things that seems too simple to work but actually saves your whole day.

nathanbennett25d ago

Had a buddy try this on a '72 Chevelle quarter panel he was fixing. He spent a whole afternoon chasing the same gap issue, getting frustrated. Then he saw some video about using a plastic putty knife as a contour gauge and it worked way better than he expected. He actually called me to brag about it, said the knife caught a low spot near the wheel well he'd missed three times before.