Hammer Forming: An Overview
Classic Car Restoration Club EditorsDescription
Hammer forming sheet metal is one one of the oldest forms of metal fabrication known. Mark Simpson introduces us to the process and and the materials as we begin our air cleaner forming project.
Hammer forming is one of the oldest techniques used to shape metal. From the early days, you know, metal was shaped by having a buck or a form and hammered over it to create anything from a shield, to a tool or anything they needed. Depending on the form, you can create as many and duplicate the same shape over and over again. But for the most part, you know, what we do in the shop is we build forms that we need to build one part for. So what we'll be doing is we'll be building our forms actually out of MDF plywood. It's easily cut, shaped and formed, and it will hold up to forming up to 18 gauge steel over it. Or, you know, in our project today, we'll be using aluminum. And in doing this, we're going to be using a couple of different techniques to actually form the metal. One is called a cold shrink, where we actually take the metal and we form it to a shape smaller than its flat state. And another technique we'll use is what they call a cold stretch, where we take the metal and we actually form it into a shape larger than it is. Both those techniques have their own problems inherit. And we'll discuss that as we get into it. Basically any part on a car can be hammer formed into a shape. We've used this process to create wheel well openings and patch panels. And here's a case where recently we had a cowl vent on a 38 Ford pickup where the drip tray inside the cowl was all rusted out. So we basically built a series of forms to hammer out a new drip tray for the cowl vent. Again, you can see how, you know, in the forming process, the form sometimes get beat up a little bit, but essentially they only need to survive long enough to make our part. So with that, let's get started.
Hi, I barely get into the video and it asks if I want to become a member, but I'm already a member. Please let me know how to access the complete video. Thank you,
Why tell me I can see this month's video , then show me a discussion on how the technique works followed by I hope you enjoyed this months video. I must be missing something here.
Anxious to see the hammer forming process
We've arervid at the end of the line and I have what I need!