Hammer Formed Dash

[MPG]

I'm just a beginner, but I do have one project I can share that some folks might find interesting.

A couple of years ago, I built a Lotus 7 clone. I started with a kit I got from Westfield. But I went off script in a number of places where I didn't like the kit. One thing I didn't like was the cheap looking plastic dash. The originals used an aluminum panel covered in red vinyl. A lot of modern ones use a carbon fibre panel. I decided to combine those by doing aluminum and covering it in carbon-look vinyl.

The problem was that a flat panel was going to interfere with the shifter. So I decided to use hammer forming to add a pocket in front of the shifter. I also added a radius along the lower edge which helps stiffen the panel.

First I created a big form out of several sheets of 1/2" particle board. Then I used a roundover bit on my router to radius the edges and a little Bondo to smooth things out.


Then I cut out piece of 5052 Al, annealed it using the "sharpie trick", and clamped it in.


Then I used hammers & home-made corking tools to work it onto the form.



After that, I cut holes for the instruments and wrapped the whole thing in 3M 1080.

The result looks something like this:


You can find more details here, here, & here.

One thing I didn't talk about in those posts was the first try that I threw away. The problem was that I left some rough spots when I cut the Al. Several of those seeded tears when all of the stretching started. I was more careful getting a smooth edge when I cut out my second blank.