Texas Repoussé
 

I’m a Houston resident with some mild welding and fab skills aiming to customize my motorcycles with aluminum fairings. I’ve done some raising and forming in years past; the garage is littered with chunks of metal that would make for good stakes, anvils, and I’m inclined to go full old school and dish all my parts on a stump, but thought I’d seek some feedback first from folks familiar with low-end English wheels.

Hi Chris

Welcome to Allmetalshaping

Cool ideas, Repousse'


Houston has some fine collections of old cars.

Why not have a whack with the basics to let your arm and shoulders limber up, and "get the good feel" on a 24in square of 3003 alloy x .050" thickness ....?
I think there is loads of "wheeling machine" info here - to peruse in your spare minutes - while resting from the hand-working. Good way to build anticipation.:)
:)
Attachment 63034
Start with what you can/where you can and then go on from there.

By constant effort and practice, things will happen for you. :):)

Attachment 63035

Welcome to the forum, Chris.

Bike-related work was & is a big part of my metalshaping goals. Along with a good stump, shot/sand bag and viable hammers, you can do a lot of good work with an arbor press and some simple shop made tooling. I use some wooden dies I made with lathe or belt sander with random pieces from the firewood pile. Tonnage isn't as important as throat depth. Fenders are super easy. other shapes like seat humps, tank parts and more are also easy to shape. The control and accuracy are big benefits.

Lots of info on English Wheels here, including fabricated wheels that have been used to make a lot of good work.

Thanks for the reflection. I feel confident in being able to move metal with the aid of hammers, bags, and wooden formers. My concern is final surface refinement- I want to avoid any sign of micro discontinuities or rippled appearance if parts are highly polished; I reckoned a wheel might help with that, but don’t really know. Maybe, instead of a wheel, I would be better off just working with fractionally thicker gauge stock, refining with dolly and slapper, then abrasion.

Planishing by hand.
Attachment 63037
Dolly on bottom, striker on top. (Curved = "spoon," shown here ...

Straight striker = "slapper." (I think of it as ironing a shirt.)

Will also stretch, if needed, using harder whacks.


Attachment 63038
Here is some aluminum body work that was smoothed by use of the hand tools shown. Like you mention, smoothing the metal by hand planishing and then filing carefully with the Vixen (curved tooth body file) on the wooden handle. Old school.


(Sorry that I don't have images for you of the Honda Gold Wing trike under construction, w/aluminum bodywork. :()

Great gobs of beautiful work, that. I’ve been predisposed to eschew the vixen, but will just have to come to terms with it. What’s the alloy and thickness of your pictured work? (same as your previous recommendation?). Thanks again.

(and you’ve got the hook in my mouth with Honda project)

Files, auto.Body, curved tooth and ...
 

[QUOTE=Mavigogun;173209] snip) I’ve been predisposed to eschew the vixen, but will just have to come to terms with it. (snip


My experience as a 20yr. old apprentice was a matter of choosing wisely.
If I chose well, then I was rewarded with deep insights, personal events/stories, and shared experiences.
Attachment 63054
traditional metal-working files (no plastic, no wood), American patterns/Euro patterns. (w/tang.)

Attachment 63055
Vixen-style "curved tooth body files" (no tang)
Attachment 63056
Two old Vixen files, made by Vixen File Co., patent-holder of the design bearing their name.

Forged steel file holder, top, mfgd "PLOMB Tool MFG Co." 1930's.
The Vixen tanged 14in. file is the best file I ever used, (over the 22 years that I shoved and dragged it over...um...a thousand miles, on a hundred fine autos. It is an 8T on one side and a 12T opposite. Sharped it professionally 4 times. Tooth angle was approaching 80deg and only plowing the surface, instead of whisking off weightless feathers. So it became "holder of experiences.":rolleyes:

Attachment 63057
Shaped aluminum, .050" 3003, being "edge filed" with special file/holder combo. Mfgd Austria, (17th gen family file maker/descendant runs the company today.) (Advises Aus. nat'l ski team on edge sharpening.)

might note that this bottom surface has been "dressed" to minimize roughness .... this also magnified tool marks ... like the measured rhythmic stomps of the Air Power Hammer - opposite the repeated-arch cascades of the old thumbnail Pullmax shrink dies. (1994)


(Aluminum Examples previously = .050" 3003, 1965 289 Cobra ...

and .040" 3003, from 1957 Ferrari factory race-team car.)
................ and ...

Were I to choose poorly, I was left to menial tasks, happily in my lonsesome.
:cool:
The five years I apprenticed days, while working nights in a resto shop, and weekends re-invigorating an old farm truck forged an intense educational elliptic to my life trajectory.


It's wise for me to make correct effort to choose well. :rolleyes:

Kent,
Wonderful examples of great old files.
sadly I don't think Heller, Simonds,or Nicholson are made in the USA anymore. The last Nicholson I purchased was made in Mexico.
Simons... India I think:confused::confused:

I have not seen a Heller or Delta in ages.
When I was interested and trying my hand at custom gunstock making I acquired some nice wood working files out of Germany but that source is long gone.

Sad to see the awesome American file companies fade out ...
We do carry some very good files now.
It took over a year of constant effort to round up good replacements ...
https://www.tinmantech.com/products/...files-holders/

Ford bought out all of our stock of Simonds "bodi-files" a couple of years back. They were completely unobtanium ... we found some originals (few boxes of them) 10 years ago ... now gone too.

hand planishing (smoothing the rough lumpy)
 

Rough lumpy metal, bashed and beat on.
Brass. Old. Valuable.
Basic hand tools: small hammer, Marlin spike (12in), deep reach hammer
Good lighting.
Comfortable working position.

Attachment 63092
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Attachment 63094

Sometimes you never know what is under the lumps and bashing, nicks and gouges....
Attachment 63095
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Attachment 63098
:):):)
1800's French "bowl mfr" was hammered in "courses" - marked lines circumferential, starting heaviest hammering at outer edge and proceeding lighter towards Center.
Cool stuff to find when carefully planishing.
(Very particular customer and collection.)

Yes,
You are my source for metal working files.
Also most of my Martin hammers and dollies:D

Files
 

Not trying to get off topic here, but I was having a problem with the new Diamond brand files I purchased locally. I discovered that when I put a flat edge across the file, it was cupped (concave) in the the middle. I took my straight edge to Ace Hardware, and all the files had the same issue.

I was speaking to Boggs Tools about sharpening some of my vixen files and mentioned my issue. He said it wasn't uncommon with todays files.

Pferd files are still flat. Kent may know of others but those are the best new files there are.

https://www.pferd.com/int-en/product...ar-body-files/

Harry Boggs will re-sharp -
... and some files can be saved .... but not concave ones ... that "slipped" through copious inspection. :rolleyes:
(Be sure to label and clearly inventory your curved tooth files that go out for sharpening ... somehow, some can go missing when not clearly inventoried on the "sharpen request."

"Diamond" that we used to know - may now indeed be sourced from far distant villagers.
(thinking of the rural Taiwan chicken farm that was packaging up US Airline eating utensils in their home kitchen. circa 1975.)