Metal Shaping Tools for Beginners
Hi, it’s Wray from ProShaper sheet metal in Charlton Massachusetts. I’M back again, I’m going to do something a little different today, a lot of students that come to my class. They have zero experience, they see stuff on the internet, they read magazines watching T.V. shows, and they say boy I’d like to learn that too, and you know I’ve got my old car in the two-car garage or out in the barn, and it’s got some rust issues and I really don’t have the money to send it off to some restoration shop and I got to learn how to do it myself. So the first step with my students with you, if you don’t have the experience, is what do I buy? I’M going to try to help you out here where to start these are tools that I find that I use all the time Some of them I’ve had for many years.
Some of them are new, so this is the hammer collection in the
dolly collection. I have tons more, I have lots of hammers, I have what’s
called a hammer tree, It’s a tape. It looks like a tree and I get all these
slots and I get all my hammers in it, and people go crazy about collecting
hammers, but the truth be told I don’t use too many hammers, but the ones I do
use. I use a lot and I love them. This is my Snap-On.
I don’t know what number it is or whatever you see you probably
can still buy this one. It has a really nice feel I’ve changed the handle on,
they put a grip on and all my grips are kind of wore off now, and I only use
this end and if you buy a new hammer, you can’t use it the way they sell it.
Here. You have to dress it; how do you dress it? Well, you use a foam pad and I
use hook and hook and loop sandpaper and you slowly sand the front of it and
you relieve the edges and the problem with body.
Hammers are a lot of them come with hard edges, and this is true
of all the uh shaping and panel work tools, as they’ll come pretty much
unfinished because it’s a lot of labor to finish stuff up and they can’t
economically sell them. So they almost expect you to do the finishing touches,
so you have to relieve all the edges I on this one here. I’ve got a little bit
more of a crown on it, and this end here the chisel end. I probably used it
about 10 times. In my life and I’ve had this since I was like 14 or 15, or
something bought this a long time ago, 50 plus years ago, so that one I use the
most these other ones, probably the next one I use the most is this one?
This is a door skinning hammer and it comes completely
different. It comes kind of flat on both ends when you first buy it. These are
readily available and you can buy them used on eBay too, and I’ve dressed this
one. So it has a round nice radius going this way and a radius going this way,
and I use this for wiring edges. So when you, you turn a 90-degree lip on the
edge of a panel.
You put the eighth inch wire in there and you have a dolly
holding the wire and you can knock that edge right over this side. I ground to
flatten – and I don’t use this side at all too much – it’s mostly this side, so
that one is used. A bunch this one, I think, was flat when I first bought it,
but I decided to dome both of the ends again. You’re, using that hook and loop
in the foam pad I’ll show you that in a little bit – and I probably could even
do a little sample once we get to the air tools, but these are all relieved and
I’ve done them domed them. This has a strong dome.
This has got a weaker dome, so this would be more of a mild, a
low crown, and this would be more of a high crown now this hammer here. This is
actually a Pexto and I found this an antique store I paid. I think three
dollars for it about 35 years ago, and I it was just flat on the ends and I radiused
it in one direction on this face and I radiused in an opposite direction on the
other face and that that’s a good utility hammer. I use that a lot now, even
more important than my hammers is my slapper. I use the slapper a lot more than
the hammers and this happened to be a Duesenberg spring.
I got from my grandfather’s restoration shop years ago back in
the 60s and it just so happened. It was the perfect thickness and the perfect
width and it had a little arch to it, which is nice and a lot of people. Ask me
you know: what’s the width here? Well, it’s about two and eight wide or so and
uh. That’s about uh, five and a half six inches long here and then you got your
little offset and your offset can be about inch and three quarter or two
inches.
That gives you your knuckle clearance, and then you can cut a
little tang out with a cut off wheel or a torch, and this one’s got a real
crude handle on it and someday maybe I’ll make a nice handle. But it’s
comfortable, and this has a really good feel it’s a spring steel. I think it’s
about 40, something Rockwell it’ll mock up a little bit, so you got to dress it
every once in a while again with that foam pad – and this is my go-to tool to
take any dents out or fine, smoothing or whatever – and you use this with the
dollies now I have a whole big collection of dollies. I got a draw dollies and I
got my bead up draw dollies, but guess what I use hardly any of them. I use
this one and this one probably the most.
I have every configuration dolly you can imagine, and if I see
one I don’t have, I would probably buy it and I probably wouldn’t use it it’s
sort of an addiction, so this is uh. I think this is a store-bought one um. I
bought this. I think on eBay, but I used to have one like this when I bought I
bought. It was a kid, but it disappeared one day and we cloned it about three
or four times so we’ve got a bunch of them, but this one I bought on eBay,
probably in the last year or so, and this has a lot of utility.
It’s got nice edges on it here and nice little high crowns, and
you can take just about any dent imaginable out with this this one. I had to
make myself because nobody makes this it’s a little. You know triangular type
shape here with the top cut off, and I just tried to put a bunch of different
nice little facets on, as this has a rounded face to it. This has a flat face
to it. This is a straight edge.
This is an edge, and this is great for when you’re tipping a
flange, and you want to address that flange, bringing it up holding a wired uh,
the wire in when you’re wiring an edge. It has a lot of utilities. I had a
chunk of 4140 and I cut it up with the band saw ground it a little bit. It
takes two or three hours to make maybe four hours to make something like this.
Then you have to heat, treat it.
We have a little small electric heat. Treating oven and it’s not
that hard a deal to do so and even if you didn’t heat, treat it as long as you
keep dressing your dolly, even if it was mild, steel it’ll work, fine, so those
are my favorite dollies and then this is a lead Shot bag. These are really
nice. I’ve got a video showing how to take dents out and aluminum using this
lead shot bag. You got to go into my uh pro shaper YouTube channel and look for
that.
Video and we’ve been working on a lotus body. Taking out these
little small dents using the lead, shot bag, the slapper, this hammer and a
torch and very handy tool to have is the little handheld lead shot bag. And
then, when you go to shaping you need mallets. These are I’m a dealer for the
trusty cook hammers and we sell a bunch of these. These are lower price
compared to Mayan they’re great for light work, but it’s uh difficult to really
do heavy shrinking in uh, 18-gauge steel or even o63 aluminum.
With these, but they just don’t – have enough um form oomph to
them, but these are great for doing little subtle stuff. So we use these in the
class and a lot of students like to purchase these when they leave the class.
But this is the main shaping hammer. I have a couple configurations. This is my
metal handle one.
I like the metal. My metal handle one the best because number
one it has a long handle, and you can really you don’t have to swing this with
your whole body and what a lot of people do and it really tires your route
pretty fast. You basically got to have to lift it, and then you, you just bring
your arm down and you’re snapping it down. You don’t have to expend too much
energy, and these have delrin heads and you get four heads with it. They screw
in you unscrew them and screw the new heads in, but usually I use.
This is the medium crown, and this is the low crown – probably
use that 70 80 percent of the time, and if you need to you, can change these
other heads out and that does a really good job of stretching and shrinking all
right. Now, let’s uh take a look at some of the grinders that you could use.
These are pretty much all low dollar grinders. I would love to have a whole
bunch of American-made grinders, and but it’s just impossible, because I need a
lot of them for the class and they are very expensive. They do last a long time
and a lot of the grinders are made in china today.
Um, even the Dewalt – I don’t know if that’s made in the U.S. or
whatever, but that’s the better uh home uh depot brand that they sell. Is these
dewalts? I think it was like 80 or so it’s a superb grinder. I also use the uh
just a little right angle, grinder.
This is the husky I don’t know where they’re made, but I suspect
that they’re made in shiner as well – and this is a harbor freight little right
angle, grinder. This is the top of their line. Air tool line, which is called
the chief line and that’s a nice little grinder and I think, they’ll last a
long time. So, let’s start with just these. These are my main workhorses here
for grinding, and I use these for grinding wells and edges of panels.
Little detail work and I prefer this Norton blaze. I buy these
all the time. I’ve been buying them for probably 10 years or more now. I
believe they’re ceramic abrasives. It’s a high quality one, you can use the
lower quality ones, but they just don’t cut like these.
Do so I’m addicted to these, and I just started getting this
brand here and I right now. I can’t remember what brand it is, but it’s an inch
and a half diameter, and these are, I think, an inch and a quarter, so you can
buy these different little rubber backing pads. These are row locks. They turn
right on really easy, quick change, and I have this one is a three inch. This
is a, I believe it was a two inch or an inch and three quarter and this one’s
about an inch and a quarter too.
So this will allow you to grind just about any sheet metal weld
or any imperfection that you want to do, and this is more of the coarser uh.
These are all 50 grit discs and it’s for coarser work and for fine work. I use
these assortment of grinders here and uh. This one would be to get into tight
spots, and these are little hook and loops that I make up. I make these by
taking these Norton’s sanding six inch discs and I made the little cutter.
It’s not hardened or anything just turned it up on the lathe
welded it and we can cut our own little discs really easy with that. No, I
didn’t hit it hard enough. There’s the little disc, so you can get about six of
them. I believe out of that and that I just once you try hook and loop if you
haven’t tried hook and loop, it’s the way to go. This is a really nice, superb
little grinder, it’s a Home Depot, sauced husky and the little foam pads I
actually get at uh harbor freight there’s other places to get them.
I, I believe also has a quarter inch chuck that you it has a
collet on it and it’ll tighten up on it, so I make all different grit disk pads
for that, and I have a good supply always on hand. Now, if I wanted a little
bit bigger, these are the standard five inch, but you can buy them different
sizes, but they get beat up on the edges. People try to grind too much and they
start grinding the foam pad and the foam pad does not grind. I found that out,
but my helpers and sometimes the students insist on grinding with the foam, so
these get worn down and if they get worn down then you can cut them down and
then you can utilize. The center of a disc say a pad.
Is here’s a hook and loop disc here that’s a 600 which we use to
clean up the English wheels and it only gets used on the outer edges. So now,
if you have a bunch of different sizes of the foam pad now you can use that and
be able to utilize that center section there. So I do the same thing with these
grinding discs. I cut them down and when you cut them down uh I probably should
go, get a clipper and cut one down and I’ll show you how I do that. So here’s a
three inch uh Norton blaze, that’s worn pretty bad on the edges.
There’s still a lot of life left in the center, so when I cut
those down I’ll get a couple uses out of them, you put it on the pad like that,
and then I have a dedicated old whisk cutter and you just cut these facets off
like This just a little bit at a time. I do about a quarter of an inch from the
edge like that, and now these tips actually are your best helpers. They grind
wells really superbly, and so I have that all in my arsenal of grinding tools.
This is the rough tools and you can do the same thing with the fine tools. So
these are all fine sanding tools, and this is the hook and loop pad.
I buy them from mcmastercar.com, I think they’re about 23 bucks
now and it has a 5 16 fine thread on it. 5. 16 24, and this grinder here is a
harbor freight source. Grinder.
I’ve had terrific luck with these. They have a fine 3 8 thread.
So, in order to put this hook and loop pad on there, you have to have this
adapter. We make these adapters and we sell them they’re on the website, and
that gives you this little distance here will give you a little uh clearance
for your knuckles and that hole. There allows you to put a screwdriver or
whatever in it, and you can take the foam pad off when you need to.
So this is for a fine finishing of wells along with this one. It’s
just a bigger surface or cleaning or sanding of some sort, and that pretty much
covers all my abrasives, except for this little I’ve spoken about this in a
bunch of videos. This is my little two-inch orbital sander, it’s a detail,
sander and you get an orbital motion out of. I use this in in the dent repair
and cleanup of rust and everything. It’s just a real work house.
I bought about four of them and I haven’t had one die in like a
couple years already: I’m really waiting for one to die, but one won’t die on
me and I don’t oil them all the time either, but they’re really rugged they’re Chinese
source. They come from harbor freight super well priced, can’t say enough good
about them. They’re just awesome little tools, so this takes the hook and loop
also, and if you watch that shrinking disc video I just did a week or so ago, a
couple weeks ago, you’ll see how I use this great tool. So now we go on to this
tool. This is another husky from Home Depot and I use this wire brush and this
is a knotted.
I think they call it wire brush. It comes around and there’s
twists, and this type is good for high rpm and is less likely to shed. So when
you use a wire brush, you should always use safety face shield because you
don’t want them sticking into you, like a porcupine, uh they’ll go into your
shirt too. So you use this wire brush to clean all your steel wells. It takes
all the fire scale off in there and it’s a well-used tool in the shop and then
this is the harbor freight deluxe chief air tool brand, and this is a four inch
cut off tool and it has a floating guard here.
So you can approach the cutting so that you can send the sparks
away from you or down below or wherever you want to be. So it’s got a nice safe
feature and the four-inch disc uh gives you a little longer life and it’s super
powerful. It’s a really well made tool, and I did a video on this too. If you
want to look in my video homepage channel so then the only other thing we’re
going to talk about in the air tools here is the abrasives that I use. I I’m a Norton
guy.
Norton is actually founded about 15 miles from my shop and I’ve
always used Norton’s. I’ve used other brands too, but I find Norton’s work
really nice and these are the grits we use. I use six-inch diameter 80 grit. That’s
the rough, then 120 that does very well for most sheet metal work. If you want
to go up further, there’s 240 and this is 400 and then I clean the wheels all
the time with 600.
So that covers my air tools and my abrasives. My cut off wheels.
I use these exclusively all the time, there’s a few other extra little ones I
use like die grinders and things like that, but this stuff I use all the time
all right. The next up is sheers when you’re working with she metal all the
time, you’re going to have to do a lot of cutting, and it was actually one of
my students that told me about these cordless shears before I’d always use the
a cheap, inexpensive, harbor freight Shear, which actually works really good
the corded one, but once you go cordless you never go back, so these are a
little pricey they’re about 325, or so they can be priced higher. For some
reason, Bosch doesn’t take a lot of effort marketing these things and it’s
sometimes even hard to find them.
This is a 12-volt version and now they’re up to an 18-volt
version they charge in like 20 minutes they come. If you buy it, you get the
charger and the two batteries and there’s a multitude of different companies
that sell them. But for some reason there seems to always be a lack of
inventory. They have a little battery, monitor, read out there and that battery
is down to one star. It only ha three one light: it has uh three lights and you
can use this for about when it’s brand new.
I think I was using it for almost two days before I had to charge
it now, it’s down to about a day or so and like I said it only takes about 20
minutes and I have the two batteries, so I always have one charged up and You
can cut right on the line with these. You don’t even have to use hand shears,
but if you do have to use hand shears the ones that are readily available
today. That I find are a good bargain and they work really good and I get them
at home. Depot which is convenient for everybody are the Milwaukee brands and
they’re very hefty, and they have serrated edges, I’m not too thrilled about
serrated edges. I prefer not having it serrated, but it’s okay and they have
the left.
Cuts left cuts right and this is the um offset size. So it
allows you room for your knuckles, so those two items there will do pretty much
most of your sharing work. That you’ll be encountering in doing sheet metal all
right when doing sheet metal, you’re going to be doing a lot of clamping too,
and these padded clamps are my favorite um and this size. I discovered – I
don’t know probably about five years ago, and it was a size that really wasn’t
common at all, and I found this at the welding supply Praxair, which is a I
think, a national brand and when I first picked them up, I was so amazed
Because it says real gear USA, I says wow somebody’s actually making a clamp in
the united states now, but it says real gear usa.com.
They are made in china, but they’re very well made and they’re
inexpensive and you probably can get them on the real gear website also, but I
get there’s a Praxair down the street from me, so I get them there. I buy them
right from the store, excellent size.
It’s got a lot of utility, it’s an it doesn’t deflect when you
put a lot of pressure on them. They’re forged high quality steel and they hold
together pretty well they’ve got a nice safe release that doesn’t bite your
finger or anything got the rubber on the release and everything well thought
out well executed and low price available to everywhere, so the next favorite
size. I have been these little ones, and I saw these at Home Depot about three
or four years ago. They started coming out and I said boy I have a bunch of
these already, but I these are really handy this size, because they’re,
lightweight and they’ve got a real good bite too excellent steel. They don’t
they don’t deform or anything when you really load them up and they got this
nice little crank on the end here.
Sometimes the round ones are not as user friendly as this little
forged flat one here. So those are mine. I have a whole range of different
throat vice grips, but I use these probably the most, with the other exception,
of these two little vice grips. These are a Chinese sauce. They come from home,
deep from harbor freight and they’re very inexpensive, and these are excellent,
excellent that the quality is not as good.
The threads sometimes are a little boggy when you turn them in,
and you have to put a little oil on them. A little white grease, but they’re so
lightweight and they’ll hold together the sheet metal when you’re going to tack
without the clamp pulling the piece down – and this is great for when you’re
wiring edges you can. You can hold a little wide inside that spot before you
roll the sheet metal around it and everything these little needle nose mini
ones come in handy now, you’ve probably seen in my other videos when I’m
fitting a panel to a wire form. I use these little squeeze clamps, which I get
from Home Depot, and these are 99 cents apiece. That’s the cheapest price I’ve
seen anywhere, but I do add, the rubber bits.
This was from belting that we cut up. Somebody gave me a big
length of belting. I cut it up with a band saw, and this has got some neoprene,
but I think I mentioned in my last uh video on the English wheel. There. It was
doing the beginning on the English wheel, these inserts you go to tractor
supply and I they have a nice uh horse mat that is like half inch rubber and a
big giant piece is only like 26 dollars.
So if you buy 20 of these clamps, that’s 20 bucks and you buy
one of those mats. You can cut that mat up and make these nice protectors for
the jaws, which gives you more squeeze power, and I use these all the time I
literally have about 200 of these in the shop and they’re always being used on
different projects around the shop. Wonderful, wonderful tools, all right:
here’s, my grinders, the right angle, grinders, electric grinders, that I use
with the shrinking discs. Now this is the five inch. This is a Makita, and this
is a nine inch Makita.
I sourced them both from Home Depot. You can buy them online,
but hope Home Depot generally has a really good price and you can go, try it
out or you know, lift it up and feel what it looks like and stuff and anything
made by Makita is generally high quality. So I’ve never had any problems with Makita
quality at all, so this is the one you use for the five inch shrinking disc. Here’s
a new disc here and a lot of people buy the five inch shrinking discs and they
don’t put a backing pad on it. Here’s the backing pad you want I’d, make a
backing pad if I could make one, but I can’t make it for four dollars.
So this is. This is a source that uh harbor freight. It works
really good. I’ve used them for years with no problem there. It is behind here
you can do the four and a half or the five inch backing pad this one happens to
be the five inch and um.
This one has a five inch back in behind it, but a four and a
half will work too. If that’s all, they have in the store and the mounting on
it is pretty simple: it’s got the lock and that backing pad also comes with the
correct nut. That’s the flanged and necked nut. It has the neck here, which is
7 8-inch diameter. This is the 7 8 inch.
7 8-inch diameter hole that it integrates into, and this has the
7 8 receiver over here. This is a 5 8 11 spindle, which is the same size here,
and you have to put washes. Sometimes you space that, like that and when you’re
done, you tighten up the nut and you want that nut to be below surface, because
now you can run it flat like that without the spindle biting your sheet metal,
and this mounts the same way except this one. We make our own backing pads here
at pro shaper. We sell them on our website.
We make in the uh the shrinking disc, the nine inch shrinking
discs in the five inch, both here at pro shaper. We press them out and mount it
up there. It is there’s your backing pad, and this is the central hub support
here and again. You want that same type of nut. That’s called the winged and
flanged nut and we’re hoping to make these 5 8 11 nuts we’ll offer those for
sale in our website and someone from France and in Europe.
They don’t use that 5. 8 11 thread. They use a 14 2 14 millimeters
by two millimeter thread on the big grinders over in Europe, so I’ll be able to
make that nut too and have that for sale. So if someone from Europe buys one of
my shrinking discs, they can buy the correct nut too, and we’re hoping also to
do this backing the central hub support. They had this little three or four-inch
central hub support, which stabilizes the disc.
If everything is set right, it’ll run pretty true, but they
don’t have to run perfectly because once you put the shrinking disc on the
surface, it all settles right down. So now these Makita grinders I’ve had for
years they run and run and run, and I haven’t even changed the brushes on them.
In fact, now I have another one that I use for a general grinding in the shop
for heavy grinding. That’s a seven inch. I leave these dedicated for the
shrinking discs and I also have two more of these five inch Makita’s one with a
cut off wheel and one with a five-inch grinding disc in it.
So it’s really handy to have all the different sizes. So that’s
it for the grinders all right. Here’s some of our beater bags that we make this
is a 12-inch diameter beater bag. This we mentioned just a little while ago and
with the all the body tools, this is a lead, filled, shot, handheld, shot bag,
and this is a 14 inch, and this is a 20 inch. We also make a big rectangular
one, which called a super bag, and then we have even a bigger one.
The thing’s about this big, that’s called the mega bag, and I
use those a lot with the classes. You can put a whole fender on them and it
stabilizes the piece really well. This 20 inch has got a lot of utility, but
you can also use these typically, I use these smaller bags more for weight
bags, and people think that you can get away with just having one shot bag or
one sandbag in in the in the class. In your shop, but generally it’s good to
have several of them, because you use them more for weight bags than you use
for actually beating the sheet metal out now everybody says: well what do you
put in them? Well, this is shot.
This is manageable. This weighs, I think, about 14 pounds or 12
pounds or something like that, and if you fill these up, they get progressively
higher with shot. So, if you fill this up, you probably wouldn’t even be able
to lift it. So what I’ve been using for years? I’ve never filled my bags of
these size bags with shot.
I use double art sand which you can buy in a hundred-pound bag,
which generally runs about fifteen dollars for a hundred-pound bag. A hundred-pound
bag of lead, I think, is going to run your about 125 or something like that by
the time you’re done so sand makes the most sense. I’ve been using it for years
for 35 plus years or so and never have any problem. We use a really high
quality, leather, suede leather, it’s a five-ounce leather on all our bags and
we triple stitch them and you can fill the bag with the sand with a little
funnel. And then you just take five-minute epoxy and you can glue the opening
really easy and you can reopen them if you ever have to, but you’d have to just
use a little heat on them and release that epoxy and you could re-epoxy them
again.
So the triple stitching ensures that they’ll last for years and
years and years if you’re careless and drive the sheet metal into the bag. It’s
very easy just to take a little piece of leather in the five-minute epoxy and
just stick a patch on it, and we’ve done that quite often, and that works very
well. It never comes undone, so these are for sale on our website proshaper.com
and this take care of your bag needs. If you want to do it, have a beater bag
all right, so here’s a few other things you can use is.
This is uh low, stick tape, and this is the fiberglass
reinforced shipping tape, and this is 1 8-inch vinyl tape. Now what do you use
those for? Well, the vinyl tape is, I use all the time and you use that to
develop lines both for shearing or for layout. This 1 8-inch vinyl will go
around a nice tight corner, it stretches and it allows you to pull a beautiful
corner and snap nice clean lines. If you try to do it with a pencil or something
your hand, will waver a little bit and you won’t get a clean line, but with the
tape you can lay out those lines beautiful.
So we use that and also in making flexible shape patterns, to
lay out all where the gauge positions are. I have a video on my YouTube channel
how to make a flexible shape hat and it will show you the process and what the
flexible shape pattern does. Here’s a flexible shape pattern for half of a
motorcycle gas tank that one of the students made here and what this allows you
to do is it allows you to work the panel out of arrangement so oftentimes his
here’s, a really good descript description of it. If you see this, was we what
the motorcycle tank would look like if it was all shaped up and everything was
laying on the on the side like you would see this high radius right here, but
the beauty of the flexible shape pattern is it’s flexible, as Is the metal that
you’re working so going from that high radius, which is not as efficient to
work as a low radius? A low radius is a lot easier to work in in an English
wheel or any other shaping tool.
So this allows you to work. The panel out of arrangement it’s a
buck, but it’s a mobile buck. It allows you to fit your piece and develop your
area value that you need once the area value is developed, then you bend the
metal into its proper arrangement and then lo and behold you have the half of a
motorcycle tank with those three types of tapes. It’ll it’ll really help you
make these flexible shape patterns and laying out any of your sheet metal
projects and here’s one something else I want to show you is that you want to
hold the flexible shape pattern on the panel or onto your wire form, and often
Other times the paper patterns want to hold them on to your sheet metal is you
need a good magnet and we buy these magnets in volume and we make the little
ends. It makes it really easy to take them off.
These are delrin ends, and these are neodymium or rare earth
magnets. They got a really strong pull to them. They come in really handy. There’s
a couple other things you’d find a lot of utility for, if you’re, just starting
out all right. So now we’re on to safety gear, and I prefer a face shield to
safety glasses.
Why? Because the face shield protects your whole face and uh
oftentimes stuff can come flying up at you if you’re using the cut off wheel
and you’re abusive with it. I’ve never had one happen to me, but there’s always
these pitches with people in with the cutoff wheels embedded into their cheek,
and I don’t find that something I want to do so. I prefer to use these face
shields and I’ve tried all different types. This is the harbor freight brand.
They come with these kind of rinky dink, little plastic lighteners
here that strip out. So I substitute and put a little wing nut on here to buy
these little metric wing nuts and put a leather and a washer in there. I
actually got a video in my YouTube channel showing how to upgrade these a
little bit, but once you do that upgrade these things are good for quite a
while and also from Harbor freight. I use these gloves. These are great if
you’re in the cold climates – and you want to drive your vehicle with gloves on
these would be they’re super supple, they’re great driving gloves, but I use
them for English wheeling mostly and they don’t shed the leather it’s a
pigskin.
I guess, and usually some of the leather ones will keep shedding
and a wonderful buy from uh harbor freight, and then hobby freight came out
with their deluxe welding accessory brand, and these are the Vulcan gloves. I
used to buy Tillman’s all the time and I swore by Tillman’s until I try to pair
these Vulcans, and these have a really long gauntlet on. It really protects
your wrist really well, and I probably bought about eight or nine pairs of
these. In the last couple years and everybody in the class has been using them
and my some of my employees and they get a lot of abuse and they really stand
up to the abuse really well, they don’t fall apart. The only time they get
broken is people.
Try to grind tungsten’s in the in the uh on the grind to the
bench grinder without taking the gloves off, which is a no-no, and they they’ll
snag the glove on the grinder and then a hole will start. But these I would
label them as the best welding gloves, tig welding gloves out there. They don’t
give you much thermal protection, but as far as suppleness of holding the torch
and holding the rod, you can’t beat them they’re and they’re. Almost
indestructible in the welding helmets. There’s a whole array of welding helmets
out here and I had just a baseline 25 welding helmet for years and years and
years I did have an automatic welding helmet when they first came out.
It was the esab that I bought and I paid like 400 bucks for at
that time, and I found that using that my eyes would uh be very uh, hurt from
the flashing that I would get and even though, no matter how much I adjusted
there was Something wrong with that helmet. I didn’t like it and I ended up
giving it to a friend. I don’t think he’s ever used it. So I kind of went on an
anti-automatic helmet for many years and I helped a friend out with some
welding advice over the phone and lo and behold. The ups truck showed up a
little while later and a couple days later, and he sent me this op trail, which
is a Swiss made helmet and I’ve tried a bunch of them and boy.
This thing I can’t say enough about it: it’s just a wonderful
helmet. It really allows you to see the puddle both in aluminum and steel, so
well, and I use I got them glued in with double stick tape. I use a magnifier,
it’s a two and a half power magnifier and that’s a glass lens. I buy those off eBay.
There’s probably a dozen places you can get them, but I find them on eBay and
those are for opti-visors.
There’s a visor that fits over your head and you can pull it
down over your regular glasses and they have a whole bunch of different lens
variations for it. So I buy just the I think: it’s the number five, which is
two and a half yep number. Five and that’s two and a half magnification, they
have in plastic and they have it in glass. The glass has better optics and I
still have pretty good uh eyesight right now, but I’ve been wearing those uh
magnifies for at least 25 years or so, and that really helps you see really
well and that’s so important when you’re welding. So, even if you don’t need a
magnifier, buy a magnifier and try it out, you’ll, really like it all right.
Next we’re going to go to measuring – and this is one of my
all-time favorite tools – is a pair of dividers. Have a nice super sharp point
and you’re measuring from point to point. It’s got a really fine thread here
that allows you to adjust the distance between the two points and dividers.
Just don’t lie sometimes, when you’re reading a scale your eyesight might not
pick up the number you get confused because it’s tight in a day your sugar
levels might be off or whatever this it doesn’t isn’t affected by it. And you
can you can get equal amount.
Graduations very easy, with the pair of dividers, it’s probably
a 5 000-year-old tool. Now a variant of the divider is the trammel rod here and
you got to buy these uh trammel points I bought these years ago and they
basically never wear out and you can buy different size rods. This is a
three-quarter by three-eighths rod. That’s what the size of the trammel point
is, and that allows you to do these long super accurate, it’s a divider
essentially, but it’s not confined by the size of the of the actual divider.
You can add a bigger rod on here.
You can put a rod on here 24 feet long and you get a precision
measurement. So if you’re doing framework or something like that, there’s
nothing better than a pair of trammel points, and this is the quick adjuster
you go to any way. You want this one does the same thing, but it also has a
little fine adjustment right here, so you get about a quarter of an inch of
play to be able to refine your point now. My other favorite measuring tool is a
24-inch scale. I get these from McMaster car they’re, stainless steel they’re
us made and if you buy some of the inexpensive Chinese scales – and you put
them next to an American scale, you’ll find out that sometimes they’re off a
few thousands here and there and it’s super important to Have a high quality
scale, so I have the 12-inch version of this.
I have the 24 and I have the 36. The 24 has the most utility. I
had a 36 and I had it laying on the bench the other day and one of my students
wanted to try out my cordless, sheer and now it’s a 32 so I’ll have to be
buying. Another 36-inch stainless steel scale pretty soon all right. Next
you’re going to need a good welder, now, a lot of people that are doing
restoration or trying to do some.
Their original coach work or copying an original design or
whatever they’re, going to need a decent welder and a lot of people think that
the MIG welder is the way to go. But it is if that’s all, you’ve been doing,
but don’t hold back. Try to get a tig welder and see the difference if you
haven’t tig welded, take the leap and tig weld because tig welding is so
superior to MIG welding and it used to be the tig. Welders are really expensive
and that’s not the case anymore. They’ve computerized them.
Basically, these are all circuit boards. They don’t have big
copper, uh windings in them and which made the uh the original uh tig weld is
very expensive and, of course, there’s a bigger market. When you have a bigger
market prices go down, I have a little Chinese source, tig welder, it’s a 300
welder, it only welds steel, but it’s a superb welder. It light gauge stain uh
sheet metal, it’ll weld very well, but no aluminum, it’s dc only. This is a
medium level of the inexpensive welders, that’s Everlast, and I think this was
about 900 or so, and I included shipping, and this does both ac dc, meaning
that it will do steel, stainless steel, copper aluminum requires ac, so it’ll
do aluminum.
Also, it doesn’t have pulse, it doesn’t have all the bells and
whistles, but you can do a beautiful job with this machine on just about any
type of sheet metal up to probably about quarter of an inch thick on steel,
aluminum, probably about an eighth of an Inch, it’s got a decent duty cycle and
its dual voltage and you need the little medium argon tank. It comes with the
regulator. Comes with a nice foot pedal and uh. They come with a warranty,
they’re a good little rugged little machine. It’s a good you’re, going to start
off with a 300 one, it won’t do aluminum or you can take the leap and this
mid-range.
You can get them as low as I think, about six hundred dollars to
a thousand dollars or so, and then I have a couple of the everlasting a little higher
range. They have the pulse in them and a little more bells, a few more bells
and whistles, and I believe, they’re like somewhere between, depending on what
brand you’re buying say, 1200 to like 1800 or so with the welding you’re going
to need that helmet. We showed you before, but this is a nice little stainless
steel wire brush, which you’re going to use with aluminum welding, and I get
these from Home Depot they’re great little brush a lot of times. You use the
little small ones. This just have a much bigger footprint and it’s more handy
to use now.
One other tool you’ll need to get started is probably an air
compressors. You can buy a really inexpensive one, but expect it to be burned
out in about a year or so you can spend anywhere from a low of 300 for an air
compressor to run a couple air tools or one air tool in your shop. At a time to
one that could be twenty-five hundred dollars for a really decent one or you
can go for the used route and buy a used one for five or six hundred that might
last for years and years, uh! That’s what I’ve done in the past. I’ve bought
used ones and made sure that the oil is good and the seal’s not leaking and the
motor might have a problem.
So you might have to change the motor or the belts or something.
So you got used options there and you got new options. There’s plenty of price
range, but you’re going to need a good compressor. So I hope this helps out all
the people just starting out. It’s a wonderful craft once you start doing it,
it’s very addictive and you’ll find that it reignites some spark in your soul
and you just won’t be able to get away from it.
It’s a lot of fun. I hope this all helps out. It’s Wray Schelin
from pro shaper workshop in Charlton Massachusetts. Thanks for watching. Please
subscribe.
Tell your friends share click! The like button leave comments.
Thank you.
Read More: Making a Paper Pattern
One Reply to “Metal Shaping Tools for Beginners”
Comments are closed.