In this article we’d like to discuss plasma cutters since they are growing rapidly in popularity as the preferred cutting tool in garages across the world. We live, breathe, and eat plasma cutters and welders and we’d like to share some tips and tricks to keep your plasma cutter running […]
Tag: metal fabrication
How to Make Louvers With a Bead Roller
Owning a bead roller can open up the capabilities of an amateur or professional garage. The more dies you add you your bead roller the more you can do. One question we often get is if a bead roller can successfully make louvers or louvres (depending on the part of the world you’re from). We decided to offer a louver die set that fits most common economy bead rollers and show you how to produce quality louvers. Read below for the step by step tutorial.
How To Bend Metal With A TIG Welder
Bending metal can be pretty simple with basic hand tools if you’re doing thin materials, but once you get past sheet metal and into thicker materials over 1/8″ it can be difficult to make sharp bends in metal without extreme force. In the past heating metal with an Oxy-Acetylene torch was one of the few ways you could bend thicker materials with ordinary shop tools. This method was common when every garage had a set of torches on hand. In today’s world a gas torch is less common as most use a plasma cutter or electric welder to cut and weld metal. In this tutorial we show how you can turn your TIG welder into a heating device and bend thick gauge metals with your TIG welder at home.
How to make Flexible Brake Line Mounts using the Eastwood Vise Press Brake
When building a custom classic car you may want to upgrade or customize your brake system and this may require starting from scratch with how you mount and run your brake lines. There are a lot of options for off the shelf kits and parts but I’ve found that they still need modification or you need to make all new parts anyways. One such simple part are tabs for where your hard brake line meets your soft or flexible brake line. I build a lot of older Fords that never came with hydraulic brakes from the factory. This means I need to design and figure out the entire braking system when upgrading to hydraulic brakes. Something as simple as brake line tabs need to be considered. I decided to show my simple solution for brake line tabs front flexible lines on a hot rod or street rod.
How to Fill and Shave Chevy C10 Gas Filler Hole
When building a custom vehicle one of the most important things is cleaning up the original design of the vehicle and doing modifications that make it look better, operate safer, and perform better. Because of that it’s no surprise that most pickup trucks with gas filler necks in the cab […]
When do you save a panel or throw it away? Repairing a Rusty Trunk Lid
When your fabrication and welding skills start to progress you’ll get to a point where not much scares you as far as repair goes. Whether it’s rust or just old body damage anything can be fixed with enough time and skills. Over the past few years I’ve started to get myself to that point where I often have to approach a rusty panel with the question “Is it worth my time to fix it?”. The answer can differ for many reasons. Is the panel easily available aftermarket or good used? How expensive are the panels? How soon do I need it versus how long it takes to get a replacement part?
How to Fabricate a Cowl Panel From Scratch
I somehow ended up with this ’29 Model A Roadster carcass I want to build a little replica-racer out of. It was cheap, the bones were there and I figured I could build it up when I found some non-existent free time. I’m a little stubborn and although I could buy an entire new steel replica body, or all of the panels new to make this car all solid again, I’d rather build the panels I need from scratch and bring a close to 90-year old car back from the dead for very little money out of my pocket. I decided I wanted to start in the front of the body and work my way back. The side cowl panels are almost ALWAYS rotted out on the bottom of these cars and after I looked at the remains of the originals I decided I could easily tackle making new panels for only a few bucks in sheet metal.
The Wrong Tools for the Job
The wrong tools for the job can cause more damage than help if you aren’t careful. When working on sheet metal a wrong swing of a hammer, the wrong hammer and dolly can cause damage to your panel that will take 3-4 times as long to fix. You ALWAYS want to match your hammer face and dolly to the shape of the panel your working on. If you’re working on a flat panel this isn’t ever a panel, but as soon as you get into a corner, a curve, or a hard-to-reach area you may need to go outside your simple starter kit of hammers and dollies.
Tech Tip- How to Move a Bent Edge
On my Model A project I channeled the car down over the chassis which required me to build new floor supports and pans. The way I built it all up I needed to make 6 small pans that would fit down in between each supports. This meant I had to nail the bends on either edge so the final inside measurement allowed the pans to drop down in between the supports tightly. I will have to take the pans in and out throughout the rest of the project so I wanted them to drop in and fit snug, but not so tight I needed to use a hammer to force them in (this could also bow the panel).