Good evening it’s Wray from pro shaper workshop in Charlton Massachusetts and we’re back on the Porsche dashboard. I got a time element here. I got to get this done because it belongs to a friend of mine and last week we made this part. I wish I had been able to do more, but we’d like to do two or three videos a week, but we’ll be just too busy. We’ve got a class starting tomorrow.

Uh we’ve got a couple people from England flying in so it should

be a pretty cool class, and this is made out of aluminum uh. Fifty thousandths

three thousand three, but before I start on this, we made this last week and we

just kind of roughed It in so now we got ta show the refinement, maybe we’ll

get it done. Maybe not. I don’t know we’ll see what we can do in about 45 minutes

or so.

These are all the gauges that show the correct profiles, and

this was the flexible shape pattern and mark made those. So we’re going to use that

information to transform this and refine it. But before we do that, I just

wanted to show you. We had the uh 10-day contest, apprentice contest program

and the first winner was Jason from Marlborough mass and he did his 10 days and

he’s such a nice guy. Everybody liked him in the shop and everything and he

loved working on the project and he was very, very dedicated to it.

He figures if he could do that, he could do anything. So it’s

just a smaller scale. So I assigned them this Volkswagen go cart and uh. We did

a little video of it, but Jason was a total beginner, and this is what he did

he’s made most of these parts, except for this one here that was made by one of

the other students, and these this part here has to be shaped. It has to go

around, it looks pretty simple, but it acts actually is a pretty complicated.

It has to have these flanges we’re going to put a little welting

in here. Just like the regular Volkswagens do um the wheel. Openings are just

preliminary we’re going to open these up and then we’re going to put a doubler

on there, and this was a cool little feature. Making the engine lid and to put

that little Volkswagen design motif in that’s done with the tipping wheel and

using the wire form which guided the production of all these parts. Plus, we

used flexible shape patterns to make sure that there was symmetry between the

two sides, as the wire form was off a little bit.

We use the wire form to hammer form this around. We actually

remove the wire form that goes in the back and it registers right back. So we

can put it back very easily and he hammer form that around here and these will

all come together. They’ll pinch together with a pair of pliers and then we’re

going to drill them and put like 632 screws in and probably every two inches or

so. The plan is, for this whole entire body to screw together, and we added

these on last night, and this was typically a separate panel, but we’re making

it one panel with a joint in the middle and that’ll have a couple 632 screws in

it too.

So this should be a pretty good, strong assembly and then we’ll

have this be wrapped around a wire and we’ll have the super lagera super lagera

means super lightweight. It’s a small tubing, we’ll probably use half inch

tubing with a 40 000 wall thickness or so, and we’ll make a couple hoops and a

surround here and we’ll use that tubing to make some brackets on the bottom. As

a bolt-on interface to the chassis, which will be made uh with the inch and a

quarter, od uh tubing and I think that’s like 60 thousandths wall and we have a

bender and stuff and Jason actually wants to make the chassis and everything

too and we’ll Put we’ll come up with some decent wheels, we’re going to power

it with a probably a cordless drill. That’s the idea – and I also have a

wheelchair uh motor that I can use also so it’s just coming along really good Jason

had absolutely no experience. So my point on this is that this can be learned

just about by anybody who has patience.

You have to have those five p’s, remember the five p’s um. I

can’t remember myself right now. I have to think about it, but so anyways he’s

doing a really good job, and I just want to thank Jason for being so patient

and to actually he’s donating his time. But he’s getting that knowledge in

return and I’m going to end up with a great little uh small go-kart electric

powered for my grandson, who turns six years old in a couple of weeks. So I

don’t think we’ll get it done in a couple weeks.

But I think that’ll be a hit with my grandson, so I just wanted

to show you that so the major uh problem with this was just getting this flange

to stretch down and uh. I had a couple comments. People were asking, you know.

How did I know that needs to be stretched well with a flexible shape patent

when you set it flat on the bench if it’s just a standard compound curve, a

standard compound curve is when the curves are going this way, and this way

they’re going in the Same direction, all the edge of the flexible shape pattern

will sit on the bench when you have a reverse curve present and that’s what

this is right here. The reason why this is a reverse curve is because, because

there’s a radius this way and then there’s a radius this way so they’re in

opposition and when you have an opposition radius situation.

You always have this situation here, where the flexible shape

pattern won’t sit flat, and that reveals how much stretch you have to do in

order to get that to sit really nice and tight. This implies stretching here.

This is inboard stretching this is edge stretching when we put this on now. The

last video our goal was to get this, so it sat really nice and it’s sitting

pretty good right now, and this line is all these dots here. That’s the peak of

the radius right there we punch the holes through and we transfer it on here

and that lines us all up, I’m off a little bit right here, so that has to roll

a little bit more there.

We might have to stretch that a little more now. Another comment

was this: has gotten really thin so, as you can see, it was 50, but now it’s

actually probably like 20 thousandths right there. Now that has to weld right

here now, the longer you make this flange, the more you have to stretch it. So

what I might end up doing here, because it got really thin, is I might cut it

off. I might cut it off like.

Let me get my pen, I can cut this off like this and then weld on

a new piece which will be 50 000 over here. It’s pretty thick, it’s probably 45

or 40 thou anyways, that’s fine! So I can weld that on right. There I don’t

have to, but I can – and I might do that so we’ll see, but right now. What I

want to do is get this radius right, because we don’t have that radius correct.

Yet so we got to find the gauges the gauges are. The story is

all here: it’s gauge 16 gauge, 17. So everything’s numbered and we find 16 and

17 and 16 went right there. You can see that fits beautiful and 17 is right there.

Now we put this on and what we have is a condition here where we have the a too

fast of a radius there.

We got the peak at the wrong point, so what we want to do is

we’ll mark index that peak so ray puts the flexible shape pattern back on the

original dash and he’s looking for the peak. So he takes gauge number 16. and

he places it right on the flexible shape pattern, and you can see right where

those dots are. That’s where the peak is so he’s going to mark the peak on the

gauge 16 and mark it on both sides. Just so when you put it on your panel

you’re working on you know, which way everything goes so he doesn’t confuse the

index mark with the peak.

He writes radius peak right on the gauge, so the flexible shape

pattern goes right on the panel we’re working on and what ray is going to do is

he’s going to mark all the uh locations for all the gauges and the peaks along

with the index marks. It’s important to put your flexible shape pattern back on

the panel uh in its home location. You can see that by where we marked out the

corners where the flexible shape pattern ends, the flexible shape pattern off

the original dash and we just punched holes quarter inch holes through them a

couple inches apart. You never punch a hole right where the intersection is,

but this makes sure that you know where all the gauges go correctly. So we’re

just going to mark all these out.

So we marked the entire panel according to the flexible shape

pattern where all the gauges go and the index marks. Now we want to see how

close we are with the arrangement value of the panel, so we’re going to start

with gauge 16 and we’re going to try and line it up with the index mark and radius

mark and when we actually put it on. We see how far off the radius actually is,

so we probably got to put that back about an inch or so then we’re going to

check with gauge 18 and see where that lies, to bring that radius back ray’s

going to use his leather face, slapper and He’s going to come over here and use

his uh wooden, dolly that he made from a piece of hardwood from a skid, a piece

of wood’s been taken and ground down to have a nice radius to it and to protect

the panel. We just lay a blanket right over the piece of hardwoods that doesn’t

bite into the panel, using the gauge as a guide we’re going to see how far back

we have to bring that radius. Now we’re going to take the leather face, slapper

we’re going to hit it!

You want to hit it not that way, because it’ll make uh dings in

the panel um. You want to make sure that you hit it this way so ray’s going to

hit it hit. The radius over very gently you got ta, do a little bit a little

bit and check it. Therefore, you don’t um. If you get into trouble, you can

always fix it.

Remember metal is clay. Take gauge 17 he’s checking see how far

off he still is, and it’s probably about three quarters of an inch. We got to

bring that radius back so he’s just confirming and now some more hitting now we

use the gauge and see how far back it’s going and we’re still probably about

three quarters of an inch to go. It didn’t really move that much so we’re just

going to keep going roll that edge over a little bit more bring the radius

back. Remember, hit check, hit check you don’t want to overdo it.

Now we’re about 3 8 of an inch away coming closer. We just want

to roll that back a little bit more okay, checking with gauge 17 again. We got

about a quarter of an inch still to go. We’re just hit that over a little bit

more, we kind of bugged it there we’re getting a lot closer right now we’re

going to check with gauge 16 as well 17. That edge probably has to come up a

little bit, we’re checking with gauge and as we put that on, we see that’s

actually in a great spot.

It’s almost perfect 17 still has maybe an eighth of an inch to

go. We’re going to check 18 see where are there and 18 is pretty good, probably

about a quarter of an inch to go so we’re just bring 18 back a little bit more

without trying to bug it up. But I think he did checking back again with 18. We

still need a little bit more and the edge needs to come out now, sometimes to

do an arrangement value. All you need is just a little muscle.

If you don’t have the tools. Well, rice has a little muscle, I

say it’s a lot of muscle ray seems to just manipulate metal with his hands like

I’ve, never seen anybody do and then we’re going to check gage. 18. Again I was

wrong. It’s 16 And 16 it seemed like it moved a little bit.

He did too much now he’s just going to bring it back a little

bit and 16 almost perfect just needs to bring that edge out a little bit more.

Now we probably need to do something over here, where it transitions, where we

stretched a lot of metal. So we’re going to go over to this English wheel that

ray had built about seven years ago. The frame is made out of aluminum we’re

trying to go for a lightweight mobile English wheel, so this was kind of a

prototype that he had created. Um all the adjusters and everything they’re all

made out of steel, and he just realized that it was just way too heavy the way

it was so.

It kind of sat back on a shelf for about a few years until uh,

one of our customers, Ed who’s, making this alpha. He asked about a small English

wheel that he could try and get uh his panel into and ray’s like. Oh, you know

what I actually have one he got it out. We put in this. We made a nice little

stand for it and Ed’s been doing great work with it.

So with this we’re just take out any dings we put into the panel

with the slapper we’re going to smooth that out now using the English wheel. We’re

not really adding area value he’s just arranging so he’s got light pressure on

these wheels and he’s just going slow, making sure the wheels don’t bite into

the panel or anything. And here we are checking back gage 17 It’s close, but

it’s still a little off. Let’s see how 16 is 16 Moved that radius a little much

so ray’s, just muscle it in you, don’t have to get these perfect at this point

right now. We’re just trying to get in the general vicinity go back to 18, see

where 18 is at 18 still has a little bit we’re just going to hit that over a

little more now you can see you really need to have patience with this.

You just you. Don’t want to go too fast because things will just

get messed up. You want to hit a little bit and check. We see that 18 still has

a little bit more to go. 17.

It’s right in the ballpark 16. very close, but he’s also got

this wiggle squiggle as he calls it, and you can just always take that out with

the English wheel just by rolling the edge, but once he puts in that flange

everything will really stiffen up. So we’re go see how it looks on the flexible

shape pattern right now. So we put the flexible shape pattern on its reading,

good and right, where we stretch that edge, we may need to stretch it a little

more, but we also have that radius, which is too far back so we’re, have to hit

that over a little Bit more we’re just massaging that radius back we’re going

to hit that flange in remember that kind of curves right back in it’s not a 90-degree

bend. So he hits that over a little bit more and then we’re going to confirm

with the flexible shape pattern.

You can see right there, we have to stretch it a little bit more,

so we’re actually going to take this to the shrinker stretcher use. Our stretch

dies just stretch out a little bit. You want to be careful because with the

stretch dies and how the aluminum so thin right now it’s very easy to crack.

Now we’re on the stretcher, we’re stretching that edge a little bit. Try not to

stay in one spot, make sure it doesn’t crack, and then we double check with the

flexible shape pattern, see how close we are and we’re putting this back on the

dash now remember this is one thickness removed.

We just want to see how close it is. We definitely need to bring

that edge in a lot more and we’re also going to need to stretch that edge a

little bit more. So we’re going to have to go back onto the shrinker stretcher,

just stretch in a few spots. Try not to keep them all together. Now, we’ve

stretched that edge we’re just bring it back so that it matches the shape of

the dash.

We hit that back over and again we’re confirming, with the

flexible shape pattern, make sure the area of our value is correct and if we

need to stretch any more now we’re talking about how back in the day, I believe

Wendler coach builders used uh Hammer form to actually make the all the parts

for the Porsche, so they would just clamp on a piece of metal and then just hit

it over right over the form. Now why we’re trying to get this done instead of

finish the Healey or anything is because we have just a limited time frame. Our

buddy Adam has uh kindly lent this to us till the 18th of march. So that’s why

we’re trying to obviously do this now? What we want to do with the dash is once

we have one completely made you’ll remember a while back ray had made a hammer

form.

I can’t remember what it was for, but we used a quarter inch

wire. He may use 3 8-inch wire, bend that to the shape and then just put a

bunch of bondo in there to really make a hard buck, and then we can just make

as many dashes as we want. All I ask is that you guys be really kind to my

voiceover. I really tried to remember everything. Wray’S taught me and whatever

he might have said in this video, but I can tell you right at about this part

right here.

Ray is praising me saying what a wonderful job I’m doing and how

great of a human being. I am also remember to please like subscribe and share,

give us those comments. We try to answer any and all comments. So thanks for

watching its ray from pro shaper workshop in Charlton Massachusetts hope to see

you real soon. Thank you.

Metal Shaping Refinement of the Porsche 550 Dash

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