Building a sheetmetal body from scratch? Here's your hammers.

[Ace-Garageguy]

https://www.riogrande.com/article?name=FretzHammersUses

 

[Pete J.]

2 hours ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

https://www.riogrande.com/article?name=FretzHammersUses

 

I've got a small planishing hammer( the one in the lower left) and am practicing with it.  So far, I have some really strange shaped brass and aluminum sheet.  Nickle silver is next on the list.

[Bainford]

Very useful link. Thanks for posting. 

[Ace-Garageguy]

Glad some guys find this useful.

These are very much just scaled-down versions of real-car body hammers, much smaller, but still heavy enough to be useful for doing metal shaping on large-scale models.

Get a leather shot-bag, you're pretty much set as far as basic hammer-shaping goes...though some small dollies would be muy helpful too.

                                                       

Edited April 10, 2020 by Ace-Garageguy

[Pete J.]

 Dapping block set can also be quite useful.  

[restoman]

Excellent!

I've had quite a few of those hammers over the years. Sold most of them off since retiring. My one criteria for buyers was whether or not they professed to wanting to actually use them, as opposed to collectors and re-sellers. The folks who said they would use them got first dibs.

Still have quite a few assorted body dollies, some bought, some home-made. Very few people nowadays seem to know what to do with them... everyone seems to think they can make beautiful shapes with an English wheel and everything else is too hard to master.

All my shot bags and wooden mallets and slappers were made by me. They're the true work horses of sheet metal forming, something I wish I would have had more time to learn more about.