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Christopher's Web Site
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Date: 7-11-2015
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Number of Hours: 8.00
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Manual Reference:
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Brief Description: Right Interior Panel
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It was painful to record the hours for this job. It should have only taken a fraction of the time this took me, but everything that could have gone wrong, did go wrong.
From the start, nothing was helping me. The template cut out supplied with the kit was not even close to the correct size, as you can see in photo #1. I wouldn't expect it to be perfect, but this wasn't even to scale, so I had to get creative in the creation of the template. After a collage of cardboard, I was able to finally make the template you see in photo #2.
Then it came to the sheet metal. Cutting it out by hand was slow, but successful. Then it came to the shaping. The sheet metal brake I have is not wide enough to handle even the first bend. The hand tools I have were not deep enough to allow me to use them either. I struggled with other creative ways to make the bends using several (and at times felt like all) tools in my shop.
I decided that I needed to purchase a larger brake and found one on sale at the local Harbor Freight. The only problem was that it makes very sharp bends that may be too sharp to allow the radius in the bend that aluminium sheet metal needs to retain its strength. Unfortunately, I was correct. I bend a few test pieces to about 120 degrees and it snapped in half.
The next several hours were spent coming up with a redesign of the brake using a 36" plywood stop as the bending point, which also meant reconfiguring the brake vice. At the end of the day, I got the bend of the brake to work, but still the form of the right panel wouldn't allow me to use the new tool I had just bought.
After several more hours and several more tools never intended to be used on sheet metal, I was able to complete the panel you see in photo #3. Victorious, I spend a few hours off the clock cleaning and reassembling the workshop. Hopefully, this will give me a fresh start for the next panel.
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Not even CLOSE to the right size
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Finally completed template
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Right Interior Panel
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