How To Shape Sheet Metal With Hand Tools

Then use your bend allowance to draw your second bend line the intervening distance between your bend lines bend radius.

How to shape sheet metal with hand tools.

There are some cuts that you can do with decent tin snips. How can you go about shaping metal with simple hand tools alone. For this example we will hammer form some tank end caps. This is a handy metal fabrication technique you need to learn.

An angle grinder fitted with an abrasive metal cutting disc works well to cut all kinds of metal including bolts angle iron rebar and even sheet metal. Follow along as i demonstrate how to hammer forming metal. They look like scissors and work fine with sheet metals like brass aluminum tin steel etc. Tin snips or aviation snips are one of the most widely used tools to cut sheet metals.

In the past we ve presented metal shaping articles that showed the average inexperienced joe how to create just about anything from a flat sheet of steel provided he has access to the right tools. Hand operated bead rollers like this one form beads and ribs into sheet metal. Instead we recommend using a diamond blade that s rated to cut ferrous metal. Mark your bend lines.

Some of the more interesting combinations use a soft top die and a hard bottom one. Such as straight cut snips left cut the right cut etc. Numerous forming and folding dies are available for bead rollers.