How To Shrink Warped Sheet Metal

Heating up metal and throwing cold water on it may shrink it a tiny bit but it makes distortion and hard steel.

How to shrink warped sheet metal.

It not only makes a damaged panel repairable and can save a job from. Get used to this idea and your abilities will grow. Though weld shrinkage cannot be prevented it can be controlled by following these steps. Start by inserting the fork into the edge of the sheet metal at the desired depth of the shrink you want to make.

Then remove the tool and move it over so the fork will roll the metal over the other side of the fork by twisting the metal the other direction. Design and welding should be addressed to minimize this sort of warping. The condition known as an oil can is often encountered when performing automotive bodywork. This is where the tuck shrinking fork from a few weeks back comes into play.

This works the other doesn t. Why not just heat it and gently hammer the swell down. When the weld shrinks along its length it causes base metal to twist around the weld figure 3. Correctly sizing a weld not only minimizes distortion but also saves weld metal and time.

Then twist the handle of the tool to twist the metal around one side of the fork. If you have access to a bead roller roll yourself a bead and shrink it. Lots of controversy surrounds heat shrinking yet i ve successfully used this process for 40 years. The bigger the weld the greater the shrinkage.

It can be described much like an oil can lid.