Show off your sheet metal fab projects

[MP&C]

Time to bump this thread.... Nice fab work your son did there Claude. You can see he's been taking notes...


So today I got a phone call, and long story short, needed to do some metalshaping for a Caterpillar D5 dozer. No, really! The last time this same mishap occurred was over ten years ago in my back yard. It seems dirt/mud gets packed between the stump pan and the oil pan, until a hole rusts through the oil pan. Last time Paul bought a new oil pan, but it sounded like he needed to use the dozer this week, so he brought it over for repair..











The heat marking is where he was attempting to braze it closed, with little success. Calipers showed the pan to be 14 ga, and I just happened to have some in stock. I've used the bead roller before to form a radius, but never on metal this thick before. This will be a good test of the fancy 75A durometer skateboard wheel to see how well it works.











Took a few passes, but worked real nice. Now for a relief cut and a weld...























Rust hole removed, patch trimmed and fitted, then welded in place..











.....and Paul cleans it up for paint..





You never know what you see over here...

 

[Omphaloskeptic]

Nice patch job!

So, just how long will a D5 Cat run without oil? lol

 

[Shortbed70]

Here's one I've done on my truck... Made with a ball peen hammer, flat tip screw driver w/no handle and concrete floor, block of wood. I laid out a grid on my two contours and pounded on the lines back and forth up and down until I had my rough shape. Then took the screw driver blade and used as a blunt chisel to create my seam. The finished it on the block of wood to get all te dimples out...

 

[larry4406]

Shortbed70 - welcome aboard and great use of basic tools!

 

[MP&C]

Nice patch job!

So, just how long will a D5 Cat run without oil? lol

I think the clay packs in tightly enough that it holds it for awhile. When he notices a drop in the oil level, its time to check on things...


Time to give this thread a bump!


Next on the list for the wagon, the upper gate. It has a similar stance as the lower gate when closed, and as such, water lays along the inner window frame at the bottom.








Ice pick test....





The lower bend is fairly flat, going to a tipped flange in the form of an arc, the inside has some compound curves going to the window opening flange...














This gets cut out and formed in one piece, flange to flange, for a easier job of replacing..







My tool of choice for removing spot welds is a 3" x 1/16 cutoff wheel. I also use the premium wheels made for stainless steel. It's worth the extra money when you don't have a brown cloud in the shop, like the el cheapo wheels leave, nothing but resin wearing away.

The upper layer of metal will start to turn blue when it gets thin and hot, letting you know you're getting close to the next layer. When you have a blue circle with shiny metal in the center, you are now in the second layer, grind around the blue a bit more and pry the layers apart..





With all the spot welds removed, here's what we find inside...











Note the deep pits. The big problem with just welding a hole closed is you don't know where the next pit is lurking, ready to break through your new paint.





Funny, with all the rust and scale inside, then you find this area of bare steel nice and shiney..





The inside will get media blasted to insure there is no more lurking issues and then epoxy primered before re-assembly.


Here's a better look at the shape we'll need...

 

[MP&C]

To start the layout on the new metal, I wanted to find the center of the radius along the window opening. By holding a sanding disc on the flats and scuffing, it showed the edges of the radius...











Then laid out a pattern to be able to measure from the bottom crease...





....and transposed it to the new sheet...











The top edge was trimmed to size and the tipping wheel used to fold over the welding flange...








Comparison....





The bottom was marked with the tipping wheel and folded in the apron brake. Then trimmed to size, again using the tipping wheel to fold over the welding flange...





It's real close right now, just needs a bit of tweaking.




















My 11 year old Vanna White also helped fabricate the repair piece in providing the rotational force for the bead roller. One of these days I need to add an electric option to bead roller, but in the meantime, it does get my daughter out in the shop

 

[1969]

How one man can be so talented and others that can't walk and chew gum at the same time is beyond me!

 

[superspec]

so that was your first time doing that right?

I need to work on slowing down long enough to create a plan of attack.

 

[MP&C]

About the most complex pieces I had made thus far on the bead roller were this windshield panel....











....and these gauge pods...

















After doing these, I guess I felt more comfortable that my "hunches" on how to form the panel for the lift gate would work. What you see on that liftgate repair panel was the fabrication from the first time out. Sometimes a bit of luck is on your side. I think that's to make up for all the rust I tend to find, where the luck seems to elude me....

 

[MP&C]

Time to bump this thread again.

Media blasted the inside of the upper gate to clean it up before welding the new part on. Unfortunately this revealed more in the way of pits, through holes, etc., so it now looks like more fabrication....



Time to attempt some dies for the Lennox. Tonight's choice is some 1" thick phenolic sheet...



Here's the profile we're looking for...



The dies installed in the holders....





An offset bend was added to the sample 19ga in the brake, then the first of three passes.....



Final pass.....



Dies held up well....





Safety tip of the day, 3" roloc discs do a good job of shaping phenolic, so skin is no match.... (note thumb in above pic)

Where my "test sample" was made initially with straight bends in the brake, the actual piece on the lift gate is not straight, so the bends on the "good" piece will need to be bent using the tipping wheel.





The profile needs just a bit of tweaking, and I may try using a piece of metal inserted in a band saw blade cut to sharpen up some of the details.

 

[MP&C]

Checked the lower profile of the upper gate with radius sweeps to lay out the new piece...

Laying out the pattern on 19ga steel....

Tipping wheel in the bead roller...

......and a newly modified back stop, much better than the flat one.....

Offset added with the tipping wheel......

Then run through the Lennox.....

More tipping, then the step die used in place of skateboard wheel with the tipping wheel for the lower 1/4" fold...

Next, need to fold the top in the window opening...

 

[MP&C]

In order to generate less scrap metal out of what looks to be a good piece so far, I made a small sample to test the fold of the window opening. Beginning with using the bead roller tipping wheel....

This is about as far as it would go, and with the good piece already having bends at the bottom, would be a bit less once tried on that piece. This will require a custom made "anvil" for some hammer action...
The donor:

As modified:

.....then for some manual tipping...

Comparison to the original....

This looks close, next task will be to cut a sample out of the original and see how close we actually are in our bends.....

 

[MP&C]

OK, enough of the practice pieces, time to finish the rest of the bends. Just to make sure we don't need any "tweaking", I'll cut a profile sample out of the center. This spot weld one the inner flange is far enough away so I won't need to grind out a spot weld, and still have enough of that flange for a good measurement. In other words, removed with minimal effort where it still holds it's shape accurately.

Our profile template:

Just to compare to our test sample, looks like the inner flange was bent down a bit much in the manual hammering, will have to ease up a bit...

Outside profile looks good enough to leave alone!

Following the measurement used on the test sample, the panel is run through the bead roller's tipping wheel nice and slow to give us an initial mark for the bend, then repeated to tip the flange downward...

This looks about all we'll get without distorting and pulling, so then it's off to the custom anvil...

Then for some manual tipping...

...and comparing to our profile sample......

Ready to cut off the old next time...

 

[MP&C]

The next task is to remove the bottom detail of the lift gate and sandblast the remaining structure in prep for epoxy primer. The lower edge did have a flange folded up, so a slit was cut along the edge and the door skin vise grips were put to use...

Next, the spot welds inside were ground out.....

Media blasting..... nice to finally see through the glass!

The media blasting revealed a few more holes, and numerous pits, many of them close to breaking through.

With all the other new metal going in the bottom, there's only one thing to do. Using the tipping wheel..........

Comparing to the pitted version.....

Next we'll need to do some corking to add the trim hole pad details.

 

[MP&C]

Now to address the mounting pads for the window molding....

Here's the new "anvil", made from some phenolic sheet.....

Put an alignment mark on the anvil, fitted it to the originals, and added the mark there as well. Then transposed those marks to the new piece...

Anvil was located, and clamped in the vise to hold it's location

Started with the barrel end hammer.....

For the ends, I used a rounded tip chisel....

....and then another "anvil" to clean up the hammer marks a bit...

Here's all the tools used....

Touched up a bit with a sanding disc, looks close enough.... One down, 4 to go...

 

[MP&C]

Working to finish up the pad details on the inner structure of the lift gate.... The center one was wider, so I used the same phenolic and just added a wider detail to the opposite side. I missed showing this earlier, but a handy-dandy battery saw works well to remove the bulk of the material, sawing parallel cuts and then just working the saw side to side to clear out the remaining....

Once cut out, the sanding disc is used to cut down the angled sides and touch up the bottom..

This compares the two, showing the difference in width...

Alignment marks transposed from the original, and guide marks indicate the area in need of hammering...

I had a request to show the hammering procedure, so here's another video attempt. The first one is using the phenolic anvil clamped against the work piece in the vise, the second uses 1" square stock as an anvil to clean up the hammer marks a bit...

http://s5.photobucket.com/user/rmcc...y Wagon Restoration Album 3/Video232.mp4.html

http://s5.photobucket.com/user/rmcc...y Wagon Restoration Album 3/Video233.mp4.html

...also sounds like I have a loose hammer handle, something for another day....

Then the sanding disc was used for final cleanup. Here's the finished piece, just needs a couple holes drilled....

 

[MP&C]

Continuing, the spot welds in the bottom piece were drilled out. This revealed a couple more pits, which were media blasted and MIG welded.

All cleaned up, the new piece is plug welded on....

Then the inner panel is fitted up and tacked in place....

Top flange clamped to check the fit.....

Finishing up the welding of the inner bottom panel....used a 3/16 hole for the plug welds this time. I normally use a letter A, but the flange here is a bit narrow, so a smaller hole it is. To make up for it the heat on the welder was cranked up a bit to insure a good weld.

Looking at the back side, these should hold well.

All the plug welds done, then on to the corner seams.....

and after cleaning up the welds.....

Then we'll clean up the plug welds on the flange, media blast the inside for good paint adhesion and some epoxy primer before closing it up..

 

[Kevin54]

I swear, what you do is not work, it more art than anything!!!!

BTW.....I don't know if you hear it when doing it, but that Barrel Hammer has a hell of a ring to it. Even the dog turned his head when he heard it.

 

[MP&C]

Yeah, it's one that I didn't change out the handle because it was so nice. I'll try again to tighten it up, but I do have a couple spare SO handles if it doesn't cooperate!

 

[littletoes]

I don't know if its Art or not, but I wonder what he charges, or makes...'cause I don't think its enough!

 

[coma13]

I built this beauty this weekend. The receiver is sheet metal that required a fair bit of bending, welding, heat treating and tweaking to get totally dialed in.

 

[loranger]

That's awesome! Reminds me of the guy who built one out of a shovel though!

 

[coma13]

That's awesome! Reminds me of the guy who built one out of a shovel though!

Boris is a legend! I'm building a steel framed Glock thanks to his innovation.

 

[Kevin54]

Yeah, it's one that I didn't change out the handle because it was so nice. I'll try again to tighten it up, but I do have a couple spare SO handles if it doesn't cooperate!

Put a piece of foam rubber or take a grommet, split it, and put it around the handle and it should stop ringing. Although I imagine that on your end, it's probably not noticeable.

A lot of times turning something on the lathe that has a thin wall will just scream along with getting a lot of chatter. I watched guys at work change speeds and feeds trying to get rid of it. All I have to do is take a paper towel, shove it into the bore, and it will take all the squealing away.

 

[MP&C]

Been a while that we've seen Jim's sheet metal thread pop up. Let me add some content to give it a bump..


Had a couple hood sides for a 37 Ford show up at the shop recently. The owner wanted to remove the side "grille", and add a tapered recess pan with clamshell louvers. Here's what we started with...

Some cutoff wheel action later....

In an attempt to keep as much metal on the ends as possible, we opted to flatten the sad remains of the horizontal fins. This involved some shrinking via the heating tip in the dent puller..

Looks like someone has spilled bondo all over this panel. Funny the inside didn't look all that mangled to warrant the amount we found.. Must be a TV car..


The shrinking efforts flattened out the ends fairly well...

I filled in the previous trim holes with 18 Ga plugs and TIG fusion while the owner worked away at removing the bondo so we could see what we had to work with...

Next, we had to fold a flange in the front and extend the factory bead around the opening down the front where we had flattened the panel. Some of the existing bead profiles had seen better days in the past 80 plus years, so I checked a set of joggle dies I had made for drip rail as it looked close...

New flange folded at the front, bead added using the Lennox, original beads touched up ...

Tapered pan fabricated.....

Louver layout

Welded in place..

He is having some art deco style trim pieces made to accent the louvers down the center, topped by 62 Impala fender trim. We didn't have those, so here it is with alternate SS fuel line for your viewing pleasure...

 

[22george]

Nice

 

[speed bump]

While not nearly to the level of MP&C this repair wouldn't even be close to as good as it was without all of the information he has shared over the years.

Decided to deal with my 71 F250s bad cab mounts this winter. Along the way I figured I should also do something about the cab corner.

So I cut out pretty much everything until I had some decent sheet metal.

Then started making some new pieces. For the sill plate where it tapered down I figured a buck would be the easiest way to form it.

After probably 2 hours of work I had a piece that fit pretty well

Then I cut the piece to repair the kick panel, insanely it was 90+ percent correct from the get go and only took about an hour to make.

Then I decided to make the pillar in roughly two pieces so I started forming the front of the pillar. Keeping with motto everything is a tool this piece of conduit seemed to match radius I needed for the corner pretty well.

At this point I smeared most of the parts I wouldn't be able to access anymore with epoxy and started burning it in. This is where I left it last week when I had to go back to work.

Overall I probably have 60 hrs into this corner but it had been a good learning experience, mostly in the motto of buy the best thing you can to start with.

 

[MP&C]

That looks quite good, especially considering the improvised radius brake. Determination makes one hell of a tool.

 

[Mike.ASC]

You guys sure do nice work.

 

[Stooge]

Some of my cobblings, theres a lot more in my old and current thread but my computer is doing some updates and is being a pain to link pictures

2019-02-22_07-32-20 by Dan Haas, on Flickr

20150524_095212 by Dan Haas, on Flickr

2019-02-22_07-29-17 by Dan Haas, on Flickr

20181013_141210 by Dan Haas, on Flickr

20181209_121502 by Dan Haas, on Flickr

20181220_153525 by Dan Haas, on Flickr

20180622_170437 by Dan Haas, on Flickr

20180622_170712 by Dan Haas, on Flickr

20180916_111524 by Dan Haas, on Flickr

 

[MP&C]

What did you use for stainless trim across the dash?

 

[Stooge]

What did you use for stainless trim across the dash?

i bought some 1/2? tubing, used some line tape to mark off about a 1/3rd of the circumference, mickey mouse'd some fixturing together to hold it in place and very slowly used a cutting wheel on a die grinder to cut that portion out, then did it 2 or 3 more times for rest of the pieces and I think I screwed one of them up and had to do it over again. then used an industrial retaining compound to secure some button head screws to the backside of tubing, (round button head to follow the round tubing made the most sense to me) so I had a way of securing it to the dash. I like the look, but im sure there would have been a more efficient way of doing it.

 

[MP&C]

Nice execution with minimal tools. I've not graduated to stainless trim fabrication yet, but it is on the list. For those on IG, this is about the slickest fabrication of trim that I've seen. Chris Davenport at Salt Flats Speed Shop is a sharp cookie!!


https://www.instagram.com/p/-WrYLir_Rm/


https://www.instagram.com/p/-WrzkVr_Sd/


https://www.instagram.com/p/-WsJbtr_TP/


https://www.instagram.com/p/-WsZo9L_T3/


https://www.instagram.com/p/-WspwRr_Ui/


https://www.instagram.com/p/-WtQTir_V6/


https://www.instagram.com/p/-WtjXLL_Wq/

 

[jeepinerdeep]

You guys are something else with your wizardry in here. I'm just happy when I get a 90 degree bend in something without it looking like I mashed it over with a dull apprentice.

 

[sberry]

Welding booth. All from scrap, washer and dryer including door hinges. The lid on the welder in the truck folds up and the machine can be extracted from the top.

 

[Bansheeboy11]

Heres that under guard i made

Mocked up the under guard, going to cut it tomorrow and try to bend it in a siding brake so i hope its thin enough. Ill try the lift arm dimple die too. FYI a 4' by 3' sheet fits wheel to wheel, rad support to cross member with a little extra. This is .080 annealed/anodized aluminum.

So i tried the lift arm method, wasnt enough weight so i stood on it. That wasnt enough weight, so i threw all the heavy things in the garage on top. That wasnt enough, so i decided just to lower the whole car onto it, which worked like a charm.

Trimmed some corners a bit, bent the sides and front up, all thats left is some rivnuts for the rad support and a few dimple dies around the thing and its just about done.

Theres about 5-6mm of gap from the pan, a little more at the crossmember. Should be enough space to keep it from rattling if it vibrates a bit.

I finished up the guard last night, it'd be really cool to have one water/laser cut for clean edges as this looks ok but not having even edges/corners bothers me. I threw a STI sticker on it to distract from one of the bends not being even. It works and doesnt rattle.

 

[MP&C]

Hood side number two completed yesterday. The flanges of the tapered pan get some stretch treatment in the kick Erco to match the profile of the hood side..

For the questions about the cutting device, it is a long nose pneumatic cut off tool from Blue Point. For keeping the cut nice and perpendicular, and disc width, the long nose works better (for me anyhow) by having the long nose as a visual guide to keep it parallel to our centerline. I don't think I would have seen as good of results using the standard cut off tool.

Each slot has stop drill holes at the end, to help remove any cracking issue and also to better determine end of cut.

E helped out with the punching efforts...…

Panel gets tacked in and welded with the TIG...

 

[racer-john]

@Bansheeboy11
Your imgur pictures appear to be corrupted.

 

[Bansheeboy11]

Weird they work fine for me?

 

[MP&C]

I only see text in your post above, nothing else..