Fold and form sheet steel

In a previous episode we explored the various ways you can fold sheet metal to make your own panels — to patch areas or, once you get more adventurous and practised, you can make whole sections. Most of what we covered entailed buying equipment — both cost effective and stuff that’ll set you up forever. But there are other ways to bend sheet metal – not only do they entail minimal cost but they can do things some machines can’t.

Simply going right back to basics, all you need are formers and a hammer – well, you need a bit more if you want to go beyond the basics but it’s amazing what you can do with two sheets of MDF board to act as the formers, some clamps and something to hit the metal with. To start off, we’ll show how you can make a simple fold — the only restriction with this is, how long your piece of board is — from a small bracket to