How To Make Ribs In Sheet Metal With Plywood Forms

Using little more than a sheet of 16 gauge steel and some hand tools we recreated the floor pans including the ribs where needed.

How to make ribs in sheet metal with plywood forms.

How can you go about shaping metal with hand tools alone. Then clamp the plywood to the form using bar clamps and leave it overnight. If i recall correctly to summarize. Next unclamp the plywood from the form and try bending it to see if it holds its curve.

The ribs are rough cut with snips put between plywood templates routed to size put between plywood forms the flange is hammered into place then single flute pliers are used to flatten the rib. Eet s look at the process of forming ribs of aluminum sheet. Follow along as i demonstrate how you can begin shaping metal with hand tools only. The little cutting templates with fingers are made of mdf and apple plywood.

These radii increase if you bend the sheet along the grain of the wood instead of across it because splinters are more likely to form when bending along the grain. Material costs were cheap less than 50 and we picked up. The shape of the form is the result of programs created in the punch press programming system. To bend plywood start by creating a form out of medium density fiberboard that has the curve you want to bend the plywood to.

Doing so creates the stiffening rib that can be used to strengthen the sheet metal. On the templates faces are the paper patterns from bearhawk plans which are well detailed with locations and sizes for all critical items such as locating pin holes rivets miscellaneous holes etc.