Sheetmetal dreams.

[C-Bag]

How do you sharpen the curved blades?

Check out Jere’s YouTube on sharpening tin snips or what he calls Dutchmen. The same thing applies to sharpening the Beverly

 

[C-Bag]

but- not anywhere as cool and elegant as the (what i can only imagine is a) marking device

I just now got what you were referencing. hey, I’m slow.

I got that out of an antique store. It’s a divider for mechanical drawing. I used a big one for laying out rivets. There’s a big ol antique store in AG next to a welding shop. I always find something cool in there. That day I’d gone through the whole place and literally was looking in the last case and saw that. $18, I had to have it and it has proven to be so handy for laying out repeating patterns. Funny even with that I somehow screwed up the pattern on that arrowhead!

 

[C-Bag]

I made progress over the weekend converting a block of DuraBar i had to the mount for the beader fence. I also made a channel stiffener as I had cut away more than I actually needed in the center. It became a confusing trial and error to get the fence tweaked so things fed and stayed on the fence. Logic did not seem to apply. I also found I needed an added lip to keep the sheet on the fence. While it can flex up and down it is ridged across the rollers and that’s what counts for straight beads. I accomplished the stiffening bead around edge and two across the panel. I originally wanted three but because of the depth of the fence I only have 12 1/2 and needed 14 1/2” to run a center bead. Two beads will do. I kinda overshot my marks on the stiffener beads ends and will go back with a hammer and dolly and fix that. Next frontier is the total unknown as I’ve never used the form rollers on my 3n1 to roll the hood skin to fit the curve of the bulkheads.

 

[Ken from ontario]

I like the lip you you added to the fence, it help the sheet metal to rest on during the operation.

 

[C-Bag]

Thanks Ken. In the test pieces I kept falling off the fence so that cured that. I don’t remember there being a lip like that on Jere’s.

As usual I really could have used the fence run the beads on the fence as they are neither straight or even. I might make another one from what I learned on this one.

 

[Ken from ontario]

I need to make my fence height adjustable, it is already adjustable for depth but for height I might just weld a 2" piece of flat bar so the edge of the sheet metal always touches the fence.

 

[C-Bag]

I need to make my fence height adjustable, it is already adjustable for depth but for height I might just weld a 2" piece of flat bar so the edge of the sheet metal always touches the fence.

? So it’s too high right now?

 

[Ken from ontario]

The problem is, when I am running a bead on a thin sheet of let's say copper, the edge of the sheet is not always perpendicular to the center of the fence , sometime the edge of the sheet goes under/over the fence (since copper is so thin and flexible ) you remedied it by putting a lip on the fence for the sheet to rest on which is a great solution but what I am planning to do is to either :
A)make the fence wider .or
B)make the height of the whole fence adjustable so it can be fine tuned so the sheet metal edge can always hit the fence in the center.
As you know , sheet metal is not always flat or straight, in my case, copper is often thin and warped/kinked , I'd like to be able to adjust the up and down movement(nod) of the fence so no matter how thin or warped a wide workpiece is, it will always touch the fence somewhere in the middle.

 

[C-Bag]

Good explanation. I don’t know how your fence mounts, is it bolted like Jere’s? Mine is just a slot with a bolt through it so it can “nod” up or down. Not planned, just happened that way.

 

[Ken from ontario]

Mine is mounted very much like yours but I'm still working on it.
I did try Jere's fence first but it didn't work for me, it had too many parts and linkages, it was too awkward to adjust , a beader fence should be a simple thing to make IMHO , I think we both are on the right track but since the type of project we do are different, mine needs to be supper simple to put on /take off and adjust, I will be working on it soon and post a few pics.