Thread: Home made sheet medal brake??.

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With all the sheet medal work I need to do to the Vendor trailer and Ole Yellar,I am thinking of building my own 4' sheet medal brake.Any one done one before??.Suggestions??.

http://www.lowbucktools.com/brakes.html

Yepper-I knew I could buy from Eastwood,harbor freight and alike.Just thought welding up my own hinged angle iron one wouldn't be that hard.

Yup. A friend and I built a 50 inch brake a few years ago. We used 4" x 3/8 angle and reinforced that, still flexed way too much to brake 4" of 22 guage, but it did work ok on shorter stuff. If I was going to need one much I would buy a pan brake, 600-$700 will get a pretty good one. For a straight brake that $410 one looks like a pretty good deal. I like building my own stuff too but having "been there, done that" I would bet I had way more than that into time and materials for a brake that didn't do what we designed it for. Maybe if you could use something like T-11 instead of mild steel it would work.

your pins need to be very big and very heavy steel or it will move like said . the longer you go with the brake and the thicker the metal the more it will flex . i used home made ones that work good on small thin metal for building cars . i have use the pan brakes that you can get for 500 and up . they work very nice for the money. 4 feet it going to be very heavy steel frame over 3/4 thick and back brace as well

If you're totally lost, I recall seeing a book from Lindsey Techincal Books, that dealt with making your own.

I have not seen it, but typically their books are very good for the novice.

Not sure where the welder's handbook I had went.It had a number of projects in the back which included building this tool.

http://www.ch601.org/tools/bendbrake/brakeplans.pdf
http://www.majorleagueduning.com/tech/Brake/Brake.htm
http://www.old.bd-4.org/bendingbrake.html

Oh and by the way, here's a group and a forum for you metalworking enthusiasts....
http://www.metalmeet.com/

Originally Posted by techinspector1

http://www.ch601.org/tools/bendbrake/brakeplans.pdf
http://www.majorleagueduning.com/tech/Brake/Brake.htm
http://www.old.bd-4.org/bendingbrake.html

Oh and by the way, here's a group and a forum for you metalworking enthusiasts....
http://www.metalmeet.com/

Thank You for those really great links.

Originally Posted by 1gary

With all the sheet medal work I need to do to the Vendor trailer and Ole Yellar,I am thinking of building my own 4' sheet medal brake.Any one done one before??.Suggestions??.

Mine is tucked away in my trailer, it is 3" angle, hinged. It did flex at first but after I put on a round bar truss (like a house truss) across the top, connected in about 5 spots across the span, it did pretty good then, 4ft wide break.