How To Shrink Aluminum Sheet Metal

Flat metal warps easy.

How to shrink aluminum sheet metal.

Fit an appropriate tip between size 000 or 2 to an. Slide on a pair or leather work gloves safety glasses and a dust mask to protect your skin eyes and lungs. Why not just heat it and gently hammer the swell down. Start by inserting the fork into the edge of the sheet metal at the desired depth of the shrink you want to make.

Heat up a quarter sized spot on. Place your aluminum sheet onto a work surface. Put it in a bead roller and put a small bead though the middle to take up the stack and add some shape. Do not over heat the steel.

Then remove the tool and move it over so the fork will roll the metal over the other side of the fork by twisting the metal the other direction. Could also add some shape around the holes with offset roller or hammer form. Get used to this idea and your abilities will grow. You could do it with a hammer as well and a groove in a piece of wood.

If you have access to a bead roller roll yourself a bead and shrink it. Heating up metal and throwing cold water on it may shrink it a tiny bit but it makes distortion and hard steel. This works the other doesn t. Heat to blue only and shrink that much.

This is where the tuck shrinking fork from a few weeks back comes into play. Then twist the handle of the tool to twist the metal around one side of the fork. Get an idea of how much heat it takes to cherry the metal and how hard you need to strike it to smooth it down.