47-59 home made portable planishing hammer build

[dsraven]

more pics

[dsraven]

this is what I have to deal with on the roof
the slapper on the 2x4 is the long way around, like really long way around. my old shoulders balked at that pretty hard. 4 rotator cuff surgeries in my past.
the slapper is also made from a section of spring i picked up off the curb one day. Calgary roads are great....if you like changing suspension parts.

[dsraven]

to polish the upper die I chucked it up in my drill and held it against the grinder to make it round, kinda, then ran it up against the belt sander to make it flat, then some emery cloth and finished with 600 grit wet n dry paper.
good enough i think. the roof will get a skm of bondo anyway. lol.

[dsraven]

the 7/8 diam bolt on the lower die also fits the lower dies from my floor model planishing hammer. it's just that the 3 dies that model came with are pretty well crowned and i figured I needed a flatter lower die for the roof. I may end up making the lower die a little bit more crowned than it currently is. i have yet to try the thing on my roof yet. spent some time cleaning up. monday is "grandkids come to baysit grandpa" cuz there is a teacher's strike. grnandson loves being in the shop so best be a little cleaner so a bunch of metal filings don't come back into the house. he seems to like making curves in scrap sheet metal with the shrinker stretcher, and sitting in the old truck pretending to drive.

[Getter-Done]

Great work and I am taking notes.

That is how it started with me , My grandpa let me drive stuff at a Young age.

[leegreen]

That looks good.
I think you need inertia at the anvil more than clamping force. Ding up a piece of scrap and give it a test. If it seems ineffective, try clamping something heavy to it near the anvil see if it improves.

For the roof, it is hard to see much in the pictures, but I think you have large low spot in front of the center weld? Rig up something to help you see how that changes and try slowly stretching along the HAZ. Presumably the problem lies in the section closest to the center where you have been unable to effectively hammer

[dsraven]

yeah, thats what I thought about the inertia vs clamping force. I'll likely try it tomorrow after O have finished up some home jobs. somebody tried breaking into our attached garage and ruined the door opener trolly. of course a new one is across the city from me but I gotta go to the industrial park for Tig gas anyway.
the roof is oil canning ahead of the forward weld. I tried to shrink it a little with the disc and gave up. then tried hammer on dolly on the weld and gave up. shoulders were killing me. Ill try the new hammer tool and see what happens. maybe gotta try and put a little more crown in the roof again after shrinking it some. the rear weld is good but then again it is closer to the rear wall so less chance of oil canning anyway. hammer on dolly fixed it up pretty well back there.

[dsraven]

here are a few pics of when I added to the roof. that was an eternity ago. I have had many side jobs and reno projects since I started MY truck, seems like somebody else's emergency always takes priority. I have learned to say no now. back on the project, between my own regular house jobs.
I will have to cut into the inner roof likely, so I can get behind the curved edge area with a dolly. oh well, its just steel.
next I will fab up a handheld planishing hammer for doing those curved edge parts. I have looked at the OX planisher online but not gonna spend that kind of USD on something l will likely not get much use from. I'll build something similar.

[dsraven]

here is a link to what the OX looks like. I checked a few youtubes and it looks like a great tool.
it's 700 bucks USD, thats about 900 bucks CAD, plus shipping and border costs.

[leegreen]

Originally Posted by dsraven

the roof is oil canning ahead of the forward weld. I tried to shrink it a little with the disc and gave up. then tried hammer on dolly on the weld and gave up. shoulders were killing me. Ill try the new hammer tool and see what happens. maybe gotta try and put a little more crown in the roof again after shrinking it some. the rear weld is good but then again it is closer to the rear wall so less chance of oil canning anyway. hammer on dolly fixed it up pretty well back there.

Unless you have hammer on dollied a section too much, you should not need any general shrinking, focus on stretching out the HAZ around the weld. It should be shrunken from welding heat. Welds shrink when they cool, that is always true.

Hard to see but it looks like you may have pushed the welded area back up into the arc it should be in, but without stretching the shrunken metal it is just pulling harder onto the surface of the roof and flattening it. start in the area that has been hammered the least and smooth/stretch it a bit at a time. Having a low angle light source with well defined shadow in the low spot will help you see it move

Are new and old metal the same thickness?

[dsraven]

yeah, we're on the same page LG.
not thinking it has been hammered too much but maybe shrunk too much with the disc, lol. it was a new tool for me and I was frustrated so maybe went overboard, lol.
i'm gonna clean and sand the area to try and get a good reflection (had some weld through primer on it to stop surface rust when it was sitting for awhile), then set up some good light and see what i havewhen I wet it down with some grease remover, it usually gives a good reflection when wet. I'll run the planisher over the areas a bit and see what happens, go from there. thanks for the input.

[dsraven]

ok, so i went a little overboard with the planishing, lol. now i have way too much crown in my roof. good thing I have the shrinking discs. thats gonna take awhile to flatten out again. my shop is well insulated so the neighbours don't get much for noise. good thing.
snowing in Calgary this evening. I was riding my motorcyle earleir today. might have been the last trip for this year., thats ok though, i have truck stuff do get after and the shop is heated nicely.my home ,made planishing hammer worked out pretty good, skill, not so much. it's a learning curve.
LG, thanks for the tip on using a heat source to figure out if the area in question needs to be shrunk or stretched. i used that tip. worked well. a little propane torch was all i needed.

[leegreen]

heat shrinking will be faster than the disk but will leave dimples for you to planish smooth. Oxy torch, heat a 1/4" spot to dull red them let it cool, surface tension will push the metal into the red spot. A bit of weight on the roof might help. Each spot will pull a flat spot into the crown. it is important to let the roof cool well so it keeps returning to its relaxed state so turn off the heat and let some of the winter in.

did the hammer work without any further tweaks?

[FinnDiesel]

[QUOTE=leegreen;9405721]That looks good.
I think you need inertia at the anvil more than clamping force. Ding up a piece of scrap and give it a test. If it seems ineffective, try clamping something heavy to it near the anvil see if it improves.

Do you mean clamping weight at the air hammer side of the tool?
I believe I had the same problem working on my dash.
I purchased the cheapest planishing tool from amazon and attempted a number of times using the planishing hammer and ended up with a number of unusable messes. I believe there is a large lack of patience on my end.

[dsraven]

the plannishing hammer worked well.
I was able to use the lower dies from my princess auto floor model plannisher and adjusted the clamping force so that the hammer and die parts were tight but not torqued down. I found adjusting the hammer force air pressure with the inline "choke" valve is what made the biggest difference in the tool's ability.
the flat lower die i made from an old trailer spring also worked well when flattening dimples and it didn't tend to expand the metal so much as the crowned lower die. so that would mean both dies were basically flat.
I also found, after finding I had waaaay to much crown worked into the roof, that using the shrinking disc was the long way around to get rid of some crown, but it worked pretty good. i did have to wait around for the anglle grinder to cool down though because it is a 9" disc and my grinder is only a 7".
I found a clothes iron, set on max heat, actually worked pretty good too. especially if the area were wiped with a wet rag first so that the iron caused the water to steam.the steam seemed to heat up the area faster than just the hot iron on dry metal.
I will likely get the torch out today and try it on a few high spots. it takes a lot of time for the roof to cool down after doing these shrinking procedures so having a second project on the go at the same time helps.
thanks for the suggestions and interest everybody. appreciated.

[dsraven]

adding length to the roof means there needs to be more crown than the stock roof had. otherwise it's too flat and tends to oil can. i think the suburbans had more crown than the pick ups did. can you verify that Finndiesel? a pic from the front of your truck would be cool to see anyway.

[leegreen]

Originally Posted by FinnDiesel

Do you mean clamping weight at the air hammer side of the tool?

it sounds like the long reach hammer build worked fine without it. My suggestion was (if needed ) to try adding some mass to the anvil as it would be lighter than the hammer side.

my reasoning is that if the frame proved too flimsy it would allow the anvil and hammer to vibrate/float. like we would instinctively reach for a heavier item to use for a dolly when we can't get a solid hit with a light one.

Your dash turned out well. I think I'd approach it as a part made of multiple pieces as well, with english wheel/planishing hammer to smooth the surface once it is pieced together and roughed into shape

dsraven: if you have the roof looking like you want but it is still too flexible, maybe add some inner support flanges made with a shrinker/stretcher that are panel glued or tacked on?

[FinnDiesel]

Sure thing, @Dsraven, the photos are taken with the lens at the height of the drip rail. That is quite observant - with the pickemups roof being less arced than the panels/burbs.

[dsraven]

thanks for the pics Finn, appreciated.
looks a little damp out there, lol.
here are a few pics of my roof after a many hours of shrinking and hammering etc. I think I'll go with it like this. i still have hammer work to do around the edges where the inner panel is in the way of a dolly. I cut that panel off at the front in order to get that area plannished to blend the crown towards the front. I will need to do that on the sides as well. thanks for all the tips and possible fixes everybody.
there is one pic that shows how it looked after my going overboard with the plannishing hammer. note to anyone else with a new tool, stop and look from a distance before you get too far in!
haha

[leegreen]

That looks great.

I never would have thought of trying a clothes iron. How did the iron compare to the disk? It would sure be a lot more pleasant noise wise to use.

I guess any flat plate heated up would work. getting all kinds of interesting ideas

[FinnDiesel]

Yeah, seems summer ended on Friday.
Your roof profile sure likes the same at the back of the door. Quite the arc from front to back, it looks strong.
@dsraven, did you planish the curve into the filler piece before welding on?

[dsraven]

I measured and marked the middle of the roof, which is just at the back of the door opening area, so the crown could be in the middle.
i didn't crown the added section, was thinking it would be ok.
yeah, not!

[dsraven]

Clothes iron worked oretty well it does heat the panel more, as well as just the high spots it touches. Disc works better but iron works too. Takes a bit to get the hang of it for duration of time spent on surface and size of area to do.

[dsraven]

well, I got my roof dimensionally symetrical side to side and the peak of the crown in the center, fore to aft. there is a sharper crown edge on the forward part but thats good by me. the front corners of the cab were not symetrical from factory, the driver's side was 1/4" lower. thats fixed now too.
I had overstretched the roof so there was a lot of shrinking to do. kinda hard to keep the peak at the center but I got it. no oil canning either now. planishing hammer works great. shrinking disc and clothes iron also work great.
all that work definately work hardens the sheet metal, but no way around it. I got alot of use out of my hammers and dollies, and the tylenol, lol.

[dsraven]

a couple pics
gotta redo some welds now. mig weld doesn't like the plannishing and working too much.