Back in 2009 I decided to do all the body and paint on my Chief. A friend who was a Rolls Royce body man taught me how to use shrinking files and heat/ice to mend panels. Instead of using filler to cover the dings and dents, I employed his methods with good success.
This photo doesn't show the depth of the dent. It was about 1/8" deep and I didn't want to just throw mud at it.
Below is a shot of a dent in the door panel where I heated up the metal with a 3000 watt heat gun, then ran an ice cube around the perimeter which caused it to shrink rapidly, pulling the center flat.
After the metal cooled, I block-sanded to visualize the changes, and did more shrinking as needed.
After heating and chilling, the dent was gone and the area only needed a tiny dab of body putty to make it perfectly flat.
The hood was full of hail dents and I used the same method but didn't need filler or putty at all since the dents were all worked out with heat and ice.
I used Acrylic Lacquer base/clear with an HVLP gun for the color and rattle-can flat black for the center. Turned out pretty good, and the black still looks great after 9 years of baking in the sun.