Stainless steel ding/dent repair

Hey gang..
Is there a successful outcome to repairing stainless steel rear window trim? Scratches I hear are easily polished out, but what about songs and dents? Any places that specialize in it?

I purchased a trim hammer from Eastwood and managed to pound out the dents and polish all of my stainless trim.

https://www.eastwood.com/trim-hammer.html

IMO it is an art that can be self taught but it is a time consuming process and requires patience and tenacity. I don't have any recommendations but I am sure there should be plenty of places near you. Start with plating shops

The key to getting it to polish out nice is sanding it many times over with progressively finer sandpaper kind of like a car paint job.

The pros make metal dollies shaped like the moulding and small hammers to get them near perfect, then sand, then polish. The guy that does my stuff charges $50 an hour, and it looks like jewelry when it is done. He can fix anything, have seen him tig 2 pieces together and you can't tell.

I made dolly's out of hardwood. Make it long enough so you can put it sticking upward in a bench vice. Lay the molding over it tapping downward on the molding. A cheap set of punches (or what I use old door hinge pins) can be ground to different shapes. These can be used to put a hard line back in. Also small pic punch to knock out small dents. Block sand lightly and look for low spots. Once the shape is close sand from whatever grit it takes down to 2000. Then polish. I suggest altering the direction of sanding with every grit change. That way you can make sure the scratches from the coarser grit are gone. Cheap to do and time consuming. But the results are worth it. I've done aluminum as well. All self taught. This corner molding was nearly smashed flat. Did all this trim.
Doug

That and at times I have to bend areas open and do fixes then bend them back.
Use a Black Marker as a Guide Coat. Once the dent is out you block sand. Paper then gets progressively finer till it is buffed with for me 3 grades Black Emery, Gray Emery, White Rouge and on some stuff Blue.
And a quick wipe with Wenol cleans it and keeps it up.
I just did some Challenger SE Type trim that goes on the rear of hoods fenders and doors.
Had to open some up to fix. Also widened the parts that slide on the hood so it could go on the T/A thicker hood.

Some times you have to open them up to get the dent beat out.
This one was crushed on the end bad. so opened it up beat it on a small anvil with many shapes. It should have been tossed.
I had the Home Depot mix some FM3 paint for the Garage.