one more question..for today

My friend bought a metal shrinker and stretcher at louiville when he went to check out the nats....It didnt come with instructions on how to use it..so they have been sitting in the boxes..i was telling him how i had seen some guys on the board here using them to make fender skirts...i kinda been buggin him about letting me try them out and he told me today to have at it...so my question is....how do you make them work???...i have never messed with them before....i have put the sheetmetal in between the jaws and pulled the handle down...and nothing happens...what am i doing wrong???

My friend told me when he bought them there was a guy giving a demo and he was making an L shaped channel out of a piece of sheet metal..so i know it can be done..but i'm doing somthing wrong

 

How many times did you work the handle? You must be certain to have the part in the jaws. Plan on working the handle a bunch. Did you just pull to where it stops or did you go further? Try it again and push a lil harder...a bunch of times. Work the part from side to side that you wanna do. 1 set of dies will shrink and 1 set will stretch. Oh yeah...what brand is it?

 

As of right now its a no name...there is nothing on it to id it...when i put the metal in it and pull the handle down it just makes a little scratch impression in the sheet metal...my friend told me he saw the guy actually making the L channel with it...i must be backwards somehow...he even tried moving the jaws around..but it seems to me that they will only go in there one way

 

Jay, what he probably saw was the guy holding a piece of sheetmetal broke into a right angle which he was then stretching or shrinking one of the legs of the angle with the tool. One tool gathers the metal together (shrinking it) which bends the angle toward you or shrinking that same piece would bend it away from you.

Charlie

 

...my friend told me he saw the guy actually making the L channel with it..

the guy didn't make the L channel. he put a curve in it. the L was made on a brake. got any sheetmetal L channel lying around? stick that in there and give it a shot.

you don't have to shove the metal all the way in.. you can take as small a bite as you want. thin sheetmetal works best... when you get to like 16 gauge it gets a little harder.

it takes a lot of pulls on that handle to make a significant bend.

 

Okay i will give that a try...My friend has a little break at his house so i will go put a L in the sheetmetal and see what i come up with...i called him and asked him what brand it was..he told me a woodward fab...

 

it will shrink better if you stick less metal into the jaws, maybe 1/2" in or so, it's difficult to shrink a full 1" depth. don't be afraid to lean on it a bit, it DOES take some effort!

 

Hey,

Perhaps a dumb question, but are you sure you have the jaws
in correctly? Take the shrinker jaws, for example- pull down the
handle down and watch the upper and lower jaw action of the
tool. If the jaws are in correctly, they should have an inward
sliding action towards the center of the tool. These jaws have a
grabbing, pinching sort of action, thats how they shrink the metal,
grab, pinch, and compress.
Don't get too carried away with oiling the jaws of this tool. They
seam to need a semi dry area, on the diagonal surface of the tool,
to work well.
These shrinkers will work in 18 & 16 gage, but no where near as
well as in the thinner gages of metal.

Swankey Devils C.C.