Greetings from Indiana!

[Reggie S]

Hello all,

My name is Reggie, and I am a car addict...

With no formal training, I decided 7 years ago to leave my management position in the wireless industry to pursue working on cars. I started by renting a small, non-heated, non plumbed space in the dead of winter, and buying/ disassembling BMW's to sell the parts on eBay. I have since moved into the repair business, and upgraded my shop twice. I now reside in a very nice space and have a great little BMW specialty repair shop, with great employees.

All of this was partially a product of the television show "Monster Garage". Say what you will for Jesse James as a person, that show (and others like it) really reached me in a major way. I had always been into cars, but seeing the creativity, skills, and tools required to build them really got me thinking and motivated.

At this point my business is primarily mechanical, but I have been cutting my teeth with sheet metal. I have become known as the guy that will fix rusty BMW's in my area. Sometimes I hate this, but it gives me a chance to practice metal working in places where it doesn't always have to be pretty.

Now, as I have time, I would like to learn some real forming techniques. I have mainly been cutting patch panels from donor cars, and they are getting thin. There are currently no floor pans available for the 80's BMW's that I specialize in, so I will need to be able to make suitable patches that fit my need for them to "look good" as well as be structurally sound.

Here's my current arsenal of metal working tools:

Hammers/dollies
250 amp MIG
110 amp MIG
Stud Welder
Cheap bead roller (HF)
Vice
Lots o' vice-grips
Torch
Cheap horizontal bandsaw
Sawzall
Various air tools - die grinders, cut off wheels, shear, spot weld cutters, etc
Eastwood TIG (just bought - still need to set-up)
Eastwood Plasma - (Just bought - So far, so fun!)

I JUST today bought a planishing hammer from Harbor Freight, and am thinking about their 3-in-1 sheet metal tool (brake, shear, roll).


That's it! Thanks in advance to all of you who share your wealth of knowledge!

Reggie

[Kerry Pinkerton]

Welcome to AllMetalShaping Reggie. I haven't heard good things about the Chinese 3-in-one machines. Generally speaking, machines with multiple purposes do a mediocre job at all of them. The HF Bead roller can be viewed as a 'kit' and reinforced in order to make it a pretty good tool. It is one of the relatively best HF products. Some of their stuff is OK, most is not. The bead roller and the 'Lancaster' style shrinkers are two of their best imo.

[HEATNBEAT]

Hi Reggie and welcome!
I'm with Kerry on this one. I have heard nothing but bad about the 3 in 1 machine from HF.

[Peter Tommasini]

HI Reggie welcome to the forum
Peter

[Reggie S]

Thanks or the warm welcomes!

I kind of wondered about the 3-in-1. I have mixed luck with hf tools. I use the site hfreviews.com to help with some of these decisions. I will have to say that their tools keep getting better. Their big tool boxes are darn nice for the money. I use the larger tool cart daily, and love it. My main box is a snappy krl, which is obviously a totally different beast, but I considered getting the big hf box for 1/4 the price of my USED box...if it were only deeper.

Are the Woodward fab tools that look like hf really the same?

The hf shrinker and stretchers are mia? They're not on the site or in the store. They still have the stand though.

I've seen the hf bead roller mods...on my to-do list. People have made those beautiful!

[David Gardiner]

Hi Reggie and welcome to the site. I don't have much experience with HF but my advice would always be to buy the best tools you can afford. You might be better off just buying one thing at a time and waiting 'till you have more money to buy the next, that's how I have always done things, in the mean time most things can be done by hand. I see you have gas welding ( I think that's what you meant by "torch") if that is the case then you have the most versatile tool at your disposal.

David

[Reggie S]

[QUOTE=David Gardiner;57698]Hi Reggie and welcome to the site. I don't have much experience with HF but my advice would always be to buy the best tools you can afford. You might be better off just buying one thing at a time and waiting 'till you have more money to buy the next, that's how I have always done things, in the mean time most things can be done by hand. I see you have gas welding ( I think that's what you meant by "torch") if that is the case then you have the most versatile tool at your disposal.
David,

Thank you for the advice. I agree with you. I started my wrenching using Craftsman tools, for this very reason. I now can afford SnapOn and Matco, and am more than willing to spend the money for the better tools.

I have been doing a lot of reading on the site, and am seeing the ways some of you manipulate and shape metal without fancy machines. I am not only impressed, but inspired! Since I originally got the "fever" from TV, I mainly saw fairly sophisticated equipment. I never would have figured out tuck shrinking or stump shrinking. What an amazing art, and site!

[David Gardiner]

Just about anything can be made with hand tools sometimes it just takes a little longer - not always though, sometimes it can be quicker to do things with hand tools than with a machine.

David