Don't take this the wrong way but it makes me feel a little better to see a bas *ss welder like you fight the distortion out on the panel skin too. I'm nowhere near as accomplished as you but I'm the 'welder' in the family so I'm the guy welding the patch panels on my dad's car. None of it has turned out how I want it to. Seeing someone who is really good at welding have some of the same trouble makes me feel a little less incompetent.
As always. Your work on the car is awesome. Sorry you had a bad time with that door skin. Just get back up on the horse. I have every confidence you will get it where you want it.
I weld a lot but this is the first project where I was actually concerned about fit and finish, usually I just grind the welds down and cover it in some paint.
When you are butt welding a panel with the MIG, you need to leave a gap. If you didn't that may have screwed you.
For shrinking, I use my student welder with the shrinking tip, not everyone has one I know. I never could mater the torch process. I've always made it worse. Hopefully you can figure something out.
Im going to leave a gap from now on. When I was researching about welding the quarter skin on, I was seeing a lot of people saying that you need to have zero gap. Some people might be able to do it this way but I'll just stick to what works for me. I was reading your post and wondering what a student welder is, so I googled it and it corrected it to Stud welder lol. Every post I make on here I have to check because the auto correct same to have a mind of its own.
Got back Into the shop today and the first thing I did was cut out yesterdays debacle. Started with a new piece cut from the parts door and fitted it to the door with a small gap. I also tacked the back side to the inner door so that it wouldn't move. Got some tacks around the patch and it started to move in a bit again. so I figured the best thing to do was make the door complete and finish welding it up after.
When I first tacked this piece in it was sitting flat against the file after a few more tacks it started to move down a bit.
I decided to add the strip of metal missing from along the bottom before I finish welding. So I tacked that on and flipped it over and added som tacks along the bottom edge so nothing can move. Also drilled the missing drain holes .
Cleaned up the welds from the patch at the rear of the door from earlier in preparation for the edged to be rolled over. I forgot to take a pic of the rolled edge. Did that for both sides. the started on the bottom
Before I completely hammered the edge down along the bottom I had the bright Idea to ooze some of the body adhesive from the patch I glued over the rear body mounts.
And after about 30 solid minutes of swinging a hammer I got it smashed down flat. It made a mess but hopefully will seal up the bottom edge from moisture. I just wish I had one of those skin zipper tools to make it faster the slowly hardening panel bond felt like it made the task harder. After I felt it was sufficiently flattened I wiped away the excess goop, tomorrow after it cures ill have to clean up the rest.
Looking down the edge Its pretty straight this way
And has some curves this way, but should be fixable with some metal rod when I match it up to the rocker panel to get those sweet gaps.
Tomorrow I think I will finish the outside. The metal is pushing up near the welds so I'll get some new blades for the body saw and run it along the gap to make them a perfect gap apart. I tried to get a picture off the rise, the 3rd tack from the left pushed up.
Heres a shot of the new patch at the rear. I successfully used the heat and quench method to bring down a high spot above the body line that was effected from yesterday.