Flatten Smooth Sheet Metal Hammering

Planish means to flatten smooth or polish metal by rolling or hammering.

Flatten smooth sheet metal hammering.

Hammer across the sheet in one direction. Proceed across creating an even row of marks. If you hammer softly most of the time and harder once in awhile those harder blows will stand out. That is almost too thin to call sheet metal.

Keep the hammer bobbing in a straight up and down motion and just turn the metal piece. This provides relatively smooth forming and controlled stretching in the same operation. Then when you undo the clamps you will have a nice flat sheet of precious metal. Place the sheet on a clean flat smooth steel block.

Another way would be to use a vice to press the strips between two smooth flat blocks. Mark both a vertical and a horizontal line through the centers of the sheet. First anneal the sheet then grip the sheet between two sheets of 1 8 thick flat stock steel sheet gripped tightly using steel g clamps then anneal the steel sheets until they are dull red and let it cool without quenching. The process of planishing uses many light blows to smooth metal which has already been formed by some other means.

Every autobody practitioner has some favorite backing surface for hammering metal. Hammer each blow with equal effort for uniform marks or textures. Hold the hammer lightly in your palm and let it bounce off the metal in a fluid motion. Wet metal causes tool rust and oxides on the metal will become embedded into the sheet during hammer texturing.

The tokyo based goldsmith yutaka nagai demonstrates how to hammer down a gold ingot to form a sheet. Just a very smooth block of half inch stock or even a flat hammer face will do. You won t really need an anvil. Tape the four corners down with painter s tape or masking tape.

A polished flatter and a polished anvil block might do it for you. Shaped plastic mallets used with shot bag backing is a particularly effective hand forming combination.