Heat Shrinking Sheet Metal

If you need to shrink in the center or where you can t get a shrinking tool in you must heat shrink either with a torch or a shrinking disc.

Heat shrinking sheet metal. There are imitators out there but the original was designed and patented by ken sakamoto of sunchaser tools. The heat is doing two jobs here. If you feel that you would like to help support trev s blog channel please consider making a donation money raised from donations will be used to buy tools. It not only makes a damaged panel repairable and can save a job from.

Hitting it with a hammer while it is hot forces more metal to be pushed into itself. As you hammer a nearly liquid hot bead against a dolly you are simply forcing the molecules into a smaller area. This works the other doesn t. Do not over heat the steel.

Pulling everything into a tight spot and making the metal soft enough that when struck with a hammer the excess material is pushed out into the surrounding area eliminating the build up of too much material in that one area. Effectively it gives us a shrink. Any shrinking you might get from the process is actually caused by the heat in a confined area. Shrinking discs speed the process of smoothing damaged sheet metal panels by applying heat through friction to help shrink the metal exactly where desired eliminating the need for body filler and creating a better and faster repair.

This easy shrink shrinking disc fits on 4 1 2 inch grinders with a 5 8 11 spindle thread and 7 8 disc center hole. The latest method of heating and shrinking metal is the shrinking disk. It expands and pushes against the surrounding metal you can actually see the metal raise up the surrounding metal pushes back and causes a small amount of shrinkage. Remember metal will initially expand when you heat it.

Why not just heat it and gently hammer the swell down. This hammering along with the cooling action will pull the metal molecules tighter together thus shrinking the metal. Heat shrinking metal lots of controversy surrounds heat shrinking yet i ve successfully used this process for 40 years. Heat to blue only and shrink that much.

The key to shrinking is to use a neutral flame heat a dime sized spot to a dull red then fairly quickly with a dolly in behind tapping the area just around and on the heat point. Get used to this idea and your abilities will grow. Alternatively you can try hammering off dolly to move the metal around a little to where it needs to be.