Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #65980 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

From the Back Cover
The craft of hand-forming sheet metal into compound curves is fast becoming a lost art. Author Eddie Paul is a master at sheet metal fabrication and in this book shares with readers the techniques to shape their own sheet metal creations. Sheet Metal Fabrication: Techniques and Tips for Beginners and Pros covers the necessary tools and how to use them; how to choose, prepare, and work with the most suitable material; how to make bucks, plugs, and mock-ups; and how to cut, bend, form, and join sheet metal. Whether you want to shape a fender for a custom car, re-create damaged panels, or just learn about this intriguing process, Sheet Metal Fabrication is a thorough reference book and guide, and a uniquely valuable resource every do-it-yourselfer needs.

About the Author
Beginning as a self-taught welder, painter, metal fabricator, and machinist, Eddie Paul has gone from customizer to creator, designer to inventor. He has built all manner of outrageous mechanical contraptions for the entertainment industry as well as more than 50 cars for movies like Grease, ET, and The Fast and the Furious. His company, which performs an array of engineering, design, and manufacturing services, has served clients as diverse as the Department of Defense, Boeing, and Rockwell. He lives in El Segundo, California.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Introduction

I recently attended a tool show and went over to the body and fender section to be "blown away" by the new body and fender hammers. Who would ever have thought they could make a body hammer with a small red stripe around its wooden handle, or that the metal heads could be chrome plated? Hey! Look at the new dollies--they now come in a cardboard box and, boy, are they shiny! I am, of course, using absurdity to make a point. The point is we have gone from horses and buggies to rockets, vacuum tubes to microchips, and from walking around looking up at the sky to flying a rocket into outer space. However, during this technological evolution, the methods and tools used for shaping metal have changed little. To repair a dent, you still use a hammer on one side of the metal and hold a dolly on the back side and tap until the dent is gone. Or, if you are forming a new piece of metal for a project, you still tap away until the shape is the way you want it to be. Forming metal this way takes many hours, but it is still the way everyone does it. Metal shaping is a long and laborious task involving a lot of old technology. The skilled craftsman has learned how to swing the hammer and hold the dolly to get the results they need. This art has been handed down through many generations of metal smiths. Take my family. My grandfather worked as a fabricator of locomotive boilers for the railroads. One of my uncles helped build giant steel submarines during the Second World War, and another worked building war ships. My dad owned and operated a few companies, one of which was a sheet metal shop, another a thread rolling business and a third that manufactured pipe. When my mom was young, she helped build aircraft. So, you might say metal is in my blood. In fact, on my moms side of the family we have the Studebakers. Yep, those Studebakers. My mom's father was a top notch machinist who built and used his own lathes and mills; her brother is an automotive writer. For the last 40 years, I've earned a living working with metal. The plain and simple fact of the matter is that since even before my grandfather's time, the art of metal working has changed little. I, and many others, have invented and built lots of tools that make metal shaping easier, but there has been no real change in the process of shaping of metal. Metal is one of those things that has gone about as far up the evolutionary latter as it can, and it still involves a lot of labor. The very fact that it is not a lazy person's occupation is what attracts me to it. Unlike things made of plastic or wood, an item made out of metal demands respect. Steel represents strength and power, and forming steel represents control over that strength and power. The ability to make metal bend or grow or even be reduced in size or do what you want it to do, gives you a feeling of power and satisfaction like nothing else. Metal, for all intents and purposes is eternal. Wood, on the other hand, will be eaten by termites or rotted by the sun within your lifetime. Most covered wagons are long gone, their wooden structures having rotted away in the desert, only their steel rims and other metal parts surviving. Metal will not last forever, but most of it will outlast us. Anyone with a circular saw and a hammer can make a table, but to heat and form metal peices, weld them together into one, and grind it to a smooth flat finish, now that takes skill...and of course a lot of really, really old tools--old, rusty tools made out of metal.

Customer Reviews

Sheet metal fabrication
I have several other books on this subject and I still found it very practical and informative. Articles on shrinking panels very good. Worth buying.

look elsewhere, definetly...
I am a metalworker, and a friend loaned this book to me. Lots and lots of photos and talk of tools and shop equipment, and actually little about technique, methods, theory. Some of the "projects" are awful as well. If this is your interest, then buy Fournier's books, and the ones by Remus.

picture book
i found this book short on tecqnicue and long on glossy pictures,for the price,sadly i really havent found an excellant metal fab book yet!!!, i get more from 2 guys garage on cable!!!!