Aluminum body; what alloy, thickness, tips and tricks

Been making some panels out of mild steel and overall 18ga or 20ga seems to work just fine.

Now I'm ready to try some things in Aluminum and while I know a lot about extrusion and overall aluminum use I've never shaped sheet before.

Trying to get some information together.

• What alloy to use? (for paint or for polish)
• Thickness?
• How to anneal?
• Do you temper after, if so how and how much?
• Differences in working it, how does it respond to wheeling, bending, rolling?

Feeling inspired by the 1950s sportscar on a corvette thread found here http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=638544&showall=1

 

3003H14
.063 +
soot with acetilyn an burn off
temper takes care of itself by working the metal
just fine

 

Spot on advice !


Ray

 

on the money there.Another way you can anneal, rub a bar of soap on the panel and heat with oxty acet until soap turns black.


my weekly metal work blog www.themetalsurgeon.com

 

Not a professional builder, .063 is pretty hard to bend at home. If you are going to hammer and stretch .063, simple rolling like a hot rod hood .050 would be my choice.

 

I'm using 3003 h-14 .o5o on my project, only because I thought it would be easier to work the compound curves.

First response to this thread is gold!

 

question on the soot with acetylene annealing process...

when you lay down the soot, do you heat through the soot OR heat the panel from the back side until the soot burns off?

 

3003 H-14 needs no annelling as it does NOT harden it has good correstion resistance but is dead soft all the time and as it really does not work harden as well it will if over worked just turn to not much good on you. I use 6061 and either oven heat treat it or acetetelene soot and burn it off as that works pretty well. 3003 and 6061 and some others are weldable 2024 7075 are not.

 

I used alot of 2024 and 7075 in the AF. Most of our panels we used 2024 T-3, pretty easy to form for brackets up to 90 degrees of bend. 7075 is harder but polishes out pretty easy. H-14 is good for multi compound panels, any will take paint with a zinc chromate primer (if you can still get it).

 

Get in contact with Matt Serrat here on the HAMB. He is building an aluminum bodied car and the build is posted here.