Truck and hood look killer! love the process, right between @NoSurf doing it with hardwood tooling and @Tuck making full out hardened finished tooling for production work. Thanks for sharing
It’s always a good day when you can hit sumpton with a hammer and a special day with those kind of results great job man
Great job! I watch all his YouTube videos. Excellent teacher he is. Awesome that the video inspired you to give it a try and it was so successful. Thanks for sharing.
Haha you got that right, I’ve already figured out how I’m going to hold it down, should look pretty neat! Very true, but I will admit picking up a 10# sledge 100+ times will take it outta ya! yea I guess a bit of laziness on my behalf that I didn’t give any other ‘hand formed louvre’ videos a chance but once I saw his process and results I was on a mission. The only thing I added that I’m surprised he did not, was to add centerline marks on the stamp/die/louvre grid to help ensure they come out as straight as possible. that’s awesome, I’m honored to join the ranks of hand made louvre inspiration. Will definitely be looking into those other guys processes, thanks for sharing there handles!
Lot of work but great results, hood top will look good on there too. @thunderbirdesq had also did a tech a few yrs back making a hammer punched louver maker out of scrap
It’s best to work off a center line, to keep the row of louvers lined up. Seems like on the video, he didn’t.
Yea I was surprised he didn’t do that, it was obvious to me after my first 2 test louvres weren’t lined up very good and the light bulb clicked to work from centerline and make center marks on the stamp and die, then just line up all 3 and boom. I will be making a second stamp soon that I think I can improve a few other small things and I should be able to make ‘em close to perfect each time. I’ll post an update once I get it worked out! Thank you much!
Back for round #2! I decided my plain tail gate was just a little too boring and needed some louvre therapy. Taking what I learned from my hood, i refined my process a little and discovered a few new tricks; 1. Use tape to separate the rows, so when cutting your initial slot, it’s WAY easier to stop your cut at a tape edge than just trying to stop at a stabilo pencil line (don’t ask me why but it just is). It’s also a quick easy way to make sure your rows are consistently spaced. And 2. Mark/make your cuts barely smaller than the width of the die, like 1/32 off each side, this will give them that perfect ‘punched’ look like a machine made it once they are hammered down. Alright back to work, because unlike Christine.. this project won’t build itself. Cheers -Neil
Just spent most of the day sanding a 32 hood with louvers. They look cool, but are a pain in the ass, and sore hands and fingers to sand and prep for paint. Rant over, now back to your regular program.
The Jalopy Journal
