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I've started my adventure in hammering out dents on the front fenders. Bought myself a ~good hobby quality hammer and dolly set and also a big wooden hammer. The smaller and obvious dents I feel like I can get them about 80% smoothed out. I am not even trying to get them perfect, just so there will be less bondo. The drivers side fender has turned out to be a big challenge. There was about 3/4 inch deep bondo in the whole area behind the wheel. You can see how bad it was. There was a tear in the sheet metal, and that was welded by a previous body work guy, and then very crudely hammered into shape. I spent about an hour on this area already, and can see some improvement.
I am trying to start on the outsides of the damage and work my way in towards the center, but it is slow and hard going.

Just spent the last 5 hours or so with the hammer and dollys on the fender, and well, you can't tell too much by the picture, but it is better. The surface of the fender looks like it got shot with a shotgun, or that is what the PO used to do body work, idk. There are still lots of little pock marks in the sheet metal in this one area, but the basic shape is pretty good. The only problem area I still have is in the yellow circle which has the inner fender in the way so I can't hammer it from the back.
Any suggestions on how to get that straightened out? The lip that runs down the wheel well edge is also not so great, but more in the right neighborhood.
I may also try some old fashioned tinning in this area. Leading, or whatever you want to call it. I guess more metal will mean less bondo.
It might have been easier/better to get a section of fender and weld that in as a patch panel. Here's a pic of the progess so far.

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Not sure if you are serious about a patch section, Mike, but note that I am headed for Berlin end of February if that helps. Germany customs/inspection already expecting me...

Mike, regarding that area that you can't get behind check out BigKev's blog for ideas. He used a little unit that welds studs to the low spot so you can use them to pull the dent out. Then grind off the studs. Above my bodywork skill level for sure but an idea to keep in mind.

A stud welder would be the right thing here to use to pull the rest of that huge dent out when there is no access from behind, but a patch panel might be more reasonable, if I can find something that doesn't cost a fortune. Eastwood has a stud welder for 250$, but the only thing I could find in germany was more like 390?, and I don't plan on doing too much body repair in my future.
I'll post a something in the for sale /wanted and see if I can get an original panel. No way I am going to ship an entire fender to germany, but a panel that goes below the trim strip and down might be reasonable.
DAF, I may take you up on the shipping, but I hope a somewhat flat fender 1/4 won't be too costly to ship

A little bit of progress on the weekend. I got the fuel tank installed with new fuel sender, and I also ran a ground line from the sender itself so I don't have to worry about ground issues. Easy to install the tank with a helper and when it is empty! Flared the end of the fuel line and got that buttoned up. Whenever making flares...practice practice practice! Before doing the flare on the car, use some scrap pieces of line and do 2 or 3 flares to get good at it before doing the final flare on the line that you already ran everywhere in the car. My flare tool has an adjustment for how hard it grips the line while flaring, and that was too loose, which caused me to screw up my first 2 "practice flares" but they were only practice flares, so I wasn't crying.
Also got the last hanger for the exhaust installed after the muffler. If I get my starter put back together, I could start to think about starting the engine for the first time...Sorry no pictures, everyone will just have to believe me that I was productive

It's probably a bit late to bring this forward now but did you happen to see or investigate this front fender repair panel

Thanks Howard. I did see that, but was able to get an original packard fender portion from Gerry at soutwest packards. Just trying to work out shipping now.

Mike - I will be seeing Gerry this weekend at the PI meet - then flying to Berlin on the 27th, if that helps...please tell me it will fit in my suitcase?

DAF