hammer forming by Ron Covell

Just got the DVD for hammerforming techniques by Ron Covell and Ron Founier. Pretty good. I rather wish they had shown the complete process for the Bugatti fender, but otherwise a pretty good video. Looks like you could make about any piece you need for the vehicle with hammerforming.

Looks pretty time consuming: First the forms have to be fabricated, then you fabricate the part. Some defnite pluses are: the forms are re-usable, and give excellent repeatability for multiple parts. The forms ( and parts ) can be made as cheaply as you can get the material.

some definite minuses: if the part you need to form will require heat in the process, then the form will have to be of aluminum or steel. also, the forms have to be precision. ( duh ) And.. at the end of a project, you would have a serious pile of forms sitting around.. and no use for them unless you have another car of similar year.. or the pieces are of high enough demand that you could sell them.. or perhaps sell the forms..

Intresting stuff. I NEED A SHOP. :whacked:

A lot of small volume tooling is made from Kirksite, an alloy that can be cast. The airplane guys use Kirksite as do the small run auto folks for their stamping dies. Kirksite also works for plastic molding,

http://www.armstrongmold.com/pages/rapidarticle.html

The nice thing about Kirksite is that you can melt it down after the part run. The bad thing about Kirksite is that people DID melt it down and the tooling is lost!!

mike in tucson