How To Shape Sheet Metal With Hand Tools

How can you go about shaping metal with simple hand tools alone.

How to shape sheet metal with hand tools.

Such as straight cut snips left cut the right cut etc. Numerous forming and folding dies are available for bead rollers. Mark your bend lines. There are some cuts that you can do with decent tin snips.

For this example we will hammer form some tank end caps. Some of the more interesting combinations use a soft top die and a hard bottom one. 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. 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. Then use your bend allowance to draw your second bend line the intervening distance between your bend lines bend radius. They look like scissors and work fine with sheet metals like brass aluminum tin steel etc. Hammer forming is one of the oldest simplest and least expensive ways to shape sheet metal.

Now that you know your bend allowance take your protractor and draw a clear line with your marker across the point at which you will bend your sheet metal. Follow along as i demonstrate how to hammer forming metal. Hand operated bead rollers like this one form beads and ribs into sheet metal.