How To Form Sheet Metal By Hand

This video shows how to create and form your own sheet metal parts with limited tooling.

How to form sheet metal by hand.

Clamp the wood on top of the metal to the workbench. Finally bend the sheet up by hand to the angle desired. Select a soft round faced or bell shaped mallet with a contour slightly smaller than the contour desired on the sheet metal part. Move the metal around to get a smooth bowl shape.

A sheet metal disc is rotated at high speeds while rollers press the sheet against a tool called a mandrel to form the shape of the desired part. Lots of little hits will make your piece of metal take shape. Next put your wooden or metal form blocks in the vice and clamp your sheet of metal between the forms. How to form and shape sheet metal for competition custom and restoration use by ron fournier paperback 30 00 in stock.

Follow along as i demonstrate how you can begin shaping metal with hand tools only. To bend sheet metal in a vice start by marking a line on the metal where you want to bend it. This takes patience and can be meditative. Mark a bend line and place the sheet metal on the edge of your bench.

After all there are only four things you can do to metal. Next place the wood parallel and slightly behind the bending line. Hold one edge of the metal in the left hand and place the portion to be bumped near the edge of the pit on the sandbag. If your sheet metal is long ask a friend to stabilize the part hanging out from the form blocks so it doesn t affect the bend.

With a combination of these manipulations you can create anything from flat sheet and you. Strike the metal with light glancing blows. Hand operated bead rollers like this one form beads and ribs into sheet metal. In this video i show how to make a simple metal brake with a couple.

Some of the more interesting combinations use a soft top die and a hard bottom one. Cut it bend it shrink it and stretch it. Numerous forming and folding dies are available for bead rollers.