Here I thought I'd take a moment and talk a bit about what we have been learning. First half of the semester we've been getting familiar with the machines in the shop by doing small projects. This included forming steel sheet metal and getting familiar with gas and tig welding. We covered mig welding last year and I was excited to learn tig this year.
Our professor is pretty dedicated to learning real hot rod based practical skills so his program is very hands on. We're also lucky to have some great forming equipment. This includes the Pullmax I've mentioned before, a Power Hammer, a planishing hammer, an Eckold that we use for shrinking and stretching, hand shrinker/ stretchers, a huge sheet metal brake, power shears, power and hand crank bead rollers, a slip roller, an english wheel, sand bags and mallets, and a few other big boy toys I'm forgetting. Here are a few projects we all had to make...
A simple circle made by running a flat strip through the slip roller until it was uniformly round and then tack weld with the gas welder.
Here the sheet metal brake was used to make a "multi angle with a curve and a fold" strip that had to match the one the professor made. The curve was made by making several small low angle bends.
Here I had to cut a curve in the sheet metal and using hand tools bend the metal over a wire, finishing it off with the Pullmax. If you're not familiar with this it's very common in areas like fender wheel openings on early cars such as a 30s Fords.
For this one I had to use two different dies on the bead roller. Can't help it, I like flames.
