Pre-Stretching a Panel
Isn’t it nice when you have a flat panel with all your beads rolled out perfectly straight with no issues? However, in some cases you might think everything is great until you pull your panel out and it’s just like a tin can all warped and out of shape. Some people may tack-weld their panel and hammer it into submission to make it fit, but in the end the fit and finish just aren’t that nice. You may think it’s impossible to fix this but all you have to do is pre-stretch your panel so you don’t have to force it into submission which we will be discussing now!
Once you get the bead lines laid out what you’re going to want to do is walk over to your Eastwood English wheel. Once in the English wheel you will put moderate tension on your panel over your lines for your bead wok. You will want enough tension so that you’re actually moving some metal. After you have achieved your desired pressure you can start rolling the metal in the English wheel. What you will want to do next is work down the center line and the metal right around that, going back and fourth a few times for each of your bead lines. Try to stay at the start and stop point on the line that you are making a bead on, otherwise you could produce unwanted distortion in your panel.
Wheeling areas of the bead lines will have stretched the metal, giving you extra material for the bead to use. However since you stretched the panel you will then have a little bit of distortion; but once you roll your beads it’ll take care of that. Once you do this you will see major improvements in your results! Now you won’t have that crazy oil can that you would have gotten without doing this. You can see that by pre-stretching left you with a panel that’s almost perfectly flat. Now you can fit the piece on your project to see the how nice the finished product is!
Want to watch the process? Look below!