Welding progress

The last couple of days in the Cowpoke Racing garage have been more fruitful. After a lot of trial and error and using some different techniques I am happy to report that I've actually gotten to a point where I can get the metal from the new tail section to tack to the rest of the car. The welds aren't pretty and I have lots of grinding to do, but I did get the tail section welded on. I still have lots more tacks to make to "connect the dots" but it's fairly well lined up and it's not coming off again. Due to the nature of the remanfactured panel, I could not get it to line up at all the critical points. I had to choose which seam I wanted lined up, and so I chose the top crease on the left rear fender. With this body line properly aligned, other areas don't line up, but I figure they're easier to modify and less likely to be noticed if they're not perfect. You can see the first area that will need to be worked (where the trunk lid shuts) in the picture below:

I've also started cutting out the rusted out gas tank mounting flange and fitting the section that Kevin sent me from his donor car (thanks Kevin!). I should have my soda/sand blaster in the next couple of days and I'm anxious to use it to prep some more of the trunk for more welding and eventually primer.

I had a friend who has restored several concours quality cars come over to the shop and take a look at my progress. I was more heartened by what he didn't say than what he did. He didn't say "dude, you're in way over your head and this is never going to look good, wtf are you thinking?", so that's good.