How To Make Ribs In Sheet Metal With Hand Tools

Light planes such as the piper or interstate have the skeletal aluminum ribs while heavier aircraft like the bearhawk have ribs of formed sheet.

How to make ribs in sheet metal with hand tools.

Two ways to add strengthening ribs are with mate s rollerball tool and a beaded emboss tool. Material costs were cheap less than 50 and we picked up. Wing ribs may be constructed of wood or aluminum and aluminum ribs may be either formed sheet or formed extrusion. Eet s look at the process of forming ribs of aluminum sheet.

Follow along as i demonstrate how you can begin shaping metal with hand tools only. A common way to add strength to a sheet metal part is to add strengthening ribs. Hand operated bead rollers like this one form beads and ribs into sheet metal. Using little more than a sheet of 16 gauge steel and some hand tools we recreated the floor pans including the ribs where needed.

Some of the more interesting combinations use a soft top die and a hard bottom one.