The simplest way to describe how metal moves or reacts when you shrink or stretch it is to imagine pizza dough. When you stretch the dough out to make a larger pie you’ll see it gets larger AND thinner as you stretch it out. If you watch the process they start with a small, thick, round piece of dough that they kneed out until the dough is the desired thickness and put the excess material on the edges for the “crust” The same if they wanted to make the pie smaller, you’d need to gather the dough together creating bunches and smooth it all together until it was the desired shape. Metal reacts almost EXACTLY the same.
Tag: metal fabrication
How to Keep Metal from Warping While Bead Rolling
If you have a bead roller, and you try to add a wide or deep bead to a thin piece of metal; or multiple beads to the same piece, you will find the metal starts to deform. You may get perfect beads in the piece you are working on, but it suddenly looks like a metal potato chip. That is because the bead roller does not necessarily stretch the metal as it presses beads into it. If you have an English wheel you can fix this problem before you begin. This problem is especially bad when rolling beads that don’t go all the way to the edge, or rolling different length beads in the same panel. Follow along as we show you a simple way to keep your panel straight when bead rolling.
Buyers Guide: When to Use Rust Encapsulator VS. Rust Converter
Our tech team answers a lot of technical calls and emails each day, and there are a lot of common questions asked and advice given. Many of them are about when and where to use our different coatings and paints. Rust products might be the most confusing as far as […]
5 Sheet Metal Projects to Get you Work in Aluminum
Aluminum is one of those materials that a lot of beginners and DIY guys and gals in our hobby tend to shy away from, especially sheet aluminum. The reality is that once you have an understanding of how it reacts when shaped and welded, it’s a beautiful material to work with and it can be formed into complex shapes much easier than steel of the same gauge. It also saves weight and can be mirror polished without rusting. Today we’re going to focus on 5 projects you can do yourself to get your feet wet in Aluminum work.
5 Easy Ways to Strengthen Sheet Metal
When you get a piece of flat sheet metal it tends to be very weak and it can be bent quite easily. So if it is so weak, why do we use this stuff for the bodies of our cars? Why not a heavier metal like metal plate? If we did that our cars would all be styled like and as heavy as a tank! This means none of those beautiful curves you see on classic cars (I don’t want to live in that world!).
Metal Cutting & Shears FAQ
Can I cut sheet metal with a plasma cutter? – Sure you could cut sheet metal with a plasma cutter, if you have one, but it’s can be like hunting ducks with a bazooka. Plasma cutters will easily cut through metal from over 1 inch thick, to thin body work […]
Smoothing the Back End- Frenched Taillights on Pile House.
I will admit that I tend to over think things when I am building a custom car and sometimes I mock something up and I don’t like it or decide I need to tweak the original idea. A while back I decided on a set of ’62 Oldsmobile 88 taillights for the back of the truck. I liked the lens shape and chrome trim on them, but the bezel had peaked ends that made it tough to sink them into a relatively flat panel. For the sake of getting “something” in the rollpan I temporarily made brackets to slide them into the panel. At first I was “ok” with how they looked, but the further I got with building the tailgate on the backend I knew in the back of my head I needed to revisit how they were sitting.
Grand National Roadster Show 2015- The year of Bare Metal?
Our main focus here at Eastwood is to make products that the DIY guy or gal can afford and can produce pro quality work with. In order for us to be sure our products are good enough for you at home, we like to get our products into the hands of high end shops so they can put them to the test. This means our Eastwood “stuff” get used on some pretty high-end vehicles built by these shops. This year the Grand National Roadster Show was chocked-full of EXTREMELY high end vehicles, many of which had Eastwood products used on them! We decided to post up about our three favorite cars by some shops that we’re honored to say use Eastwood products in their builds!
Scratch building a Ford Hot Rod to Scale- Building a skeleton
Recently product developer Mark R. decided to build a 30’s Ford Hot Rod to scale. The process would be fun and it’s going to allow him to test a number of the new Eastwood Metal Fabrication tools and accessories we have coming down the pike. We figured we’d document the process and give you some sneak peaks at new products along the way.