"Paul K. Dickman" wrote in message
...

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...
An article in the Nov. 25th recent issue of the NYT, "Rust-Free Reality:
Creating an All-New Classic," talks about the growing business of
supplying low-volume steel body panels to the restoration market. I've
been curious for a long while about what they're using for dies, and what
the processes are. As most of you know, making original dies for
high-volume car manufacture costs millions of dollars for each die.

Before I start spending time on it, does anyone know the story about
these steel panels?

--
Ed Huntress


Some where around here, I have a copy of the ASTME collected papers from
1962.

There was an article about using steel filled epoxy for short run draw
dies. They were making the same sort of panels. They were aluminum
aircraft panels, if I recall correctly, but I imagine the state of the art
has advanced in the last 45 years.

Paul K. Dickman

They were still forming aluminum with filled-epoxy dies when I was writing
about it, around 1980. But superplastic aluminum was just coming in then and
attention shifted to the new material.

Other posters have mentioned concrete and Kirksite, both of which have been
used for steel forming that didn't require either a lot of precision or a
lot of specific force. But my feeling is there must be something better
these days, and these replacement-panel makers are using it.

We'll see. Maybe someone here has looked into the industry.

--
Ed Huntress