Bonehead tech, making a hood with a hammer and pliers only
Here's a few pics of my bro and I making a one piece hood for the A.
Turned out pretty good considering we have no english wheel or planishing hammer.
start out by making a cardboard template. It helps if you have better cardboard than this,
that isn't corrugated and covers the entire hood. It also helps if you take the old hood OFF first!
transfer the template to the sheetmetal, we used 20ga steel.
Leave one extra .5-.75" around (dotted line) to fold over
cut the shape out (plasma cutter works OK, would rather have an electric nibbler)
set that bad boy up there and check that your lines are straight
then start folding over along the solid line using pliers. It won't work in a brake since the line is arched
when you get it over 90 degrees take a dolly under the lip and pound it all flat so you
have a nice arched 90 degree folded lip the whole length, whether it is front or back
using a 2x4 to hold the sheetmetal flat helps when pounding the edge all the way over.
Since you have your nice smooth arched edge from the dolly, bending it the rest of the way over is easy.
You may need to cut some slits on the back of the hood since it will want to stretch quite a bit.
It is too large and gangly for us to put in our shrinker strecther!
pound the whole lip flat as you can, but make sure you don't go nuts or
that there is anything under the sheet when punding you'll getn a few high or low spots
once you've got one edge done, put it on the car and check for fit and that your lines are still on.
It helps if you don't bend the hood all the way just yet, as you still need to fold over one more edge.
Mark your lines to bend over the edge front to back (the hood "side")
with the back and front lip folded over (and some grinding and re-hammering later)
it's ready to be folded over on the sides.
We marked a line with a level and bent that 90 degrees on each side.
Now's the time to file and sand all the rough spots down.
with the sides folded over we could paint it. Now the last step is figuring out a hold down,
something that is quickly removed.
Either dzus fasteneres or leather buckles. We'll let you figure that out
Hot Rod Body Work at Home Tech by Busch and Busch
Hot Rod Body Work at Home Brought to you by Hot Rodders Auctions
More great articles from Hotrodders Auctions
Hot Rod Body Work at Home HotroddersAuctions.com copyright 2005