Dishing Sheet Metal

Dishing the metal into a hollow or depression in the end of a log works but unless you have a lathe to quickly turn out a bowl shaped depression you must carve a hollow by wood chisel or simply repeated pounding.

Dishing sheet metal.

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. Diameters range from less than 1 meter up to more than 8 m. Material thicknesses range from 5 to 60 mm in the cold condition and up to 80 mm in the hot condition. Bending sheet metal by hand is a manageable task if the piece of sheet metal is small and thin enough to handle.

Tube thickness from 1 16 1 5mm to 1 4 6mm can be flanged from mild steel. A dishing and flanging line can form heads of any shape be it flat conical standard torispherical semielliptical or ellipsoidal. Tube lengths from 8 205 mm up to 60 1525 mm can be flanged with standard length upper channels. Most frequently expensive sheet metal bending tools called brakes are used to bend sheet metal but you can also complete this task without one.

Both of these latter methods take time and all three presuppose a handy wood source.