making steel copies of fiberglass quarter panels

[Guest tom sixbey]

here's one to chew on - Is it possible to use fiberglass panels as a template for having duplicates made in steel? I'm sure it would be expensive, but i'd rather pay a price than have a bonded-on fiberglass quater panel crack and fall off a few years down the road!

[Guest greimann]

What you are talking about is esentially taking the fiberglass panels and making stamping or beating forms from them. That involves casting a hard surfaced female from epoxy or kirksite, or digitizing it and milling a hardwood form on a 5 axis gantry. Then once you have the form, skillfully forming the sheetmetal into it is another project entirely.

 

Expensive? YES! Worth it?????

[Guest Anonymous]

Yeah, like Den said. You can approximate the cross-section using like a veneer duplicating tool (looks like a bunch of steel pins that has a band in the center so when you press it against things it retains the outline), or slower but possible, you can cut paper templates until you duplicate the curves. Then you build wood bucks and using a english wheel, or if your hardcore and good with them, a large wood hammer and shot bag and slowly stretch the metal till you get the profile you want while checking it against the wooden 3d bucks. English wheel is the way to go, but this is extremely advance metal work and you'd be working with advanced compound curves and then having to weld the panels together once you get the curves to fit your bucks. This is how nearly all old coachwork was done, ferrari's, cobra's etc. Whats interesting to note is hand formed bodies are not exactly the same from one side to the other, they're close, but not exactly the same. A guy found that out when he mic'ed a original cobra body and found discrepencies from one side to the other. Panel beating is a lost art, not impossible, but don't expect to learn it in a week.

 

Regards,

 

Lone

[denny411]

It may be more realistic to have someone skilled with an english wheel make some one offs. It would take some serious money and equipement to actually build a die to stamp out flared quarters.not to mention you would have to do it twice, one for each side.

[Guest tom sixbey]

hmm... thanks for the advice... maybr it'll happen maybe it wont. - if i cant afford it, i'll probably just visibly rivet the quarters on. As ugly as it may sound, i wont have to worry about it cracking! thanks guys...