"c.henry" wrote in message
. ..
Ed Huntress wrote:
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
Ed,

Some of them are original dies , believe it or not .

I remember the first story I read about that business, back around 1980,
when someone had acquired original dies for a mid-'50s Chevy. It sounds from
the NYT article, though, like the newer firms in the business are using
something else.

The big three are notorious fior never throwing these things away, there
is a warehouse near me full of injection moulds that are for chryslers not
made since the mid eighties


Modern manufacturing has reduced costs for stamping dies to a fraction of
what is once was , that and the newer grades of steel that can undergo
multiple stampings without cracking or needing to be annealed

All of which makes sense, but is that what they're using? Or are they using
entirely different materials? The cost of just the block of steel to make a
traditional major body-panel die is astronomical. As an extreme example, I
remember a block of steel used to make the front-end section of a Ford truck
cost $2 million and took two years to cool after it was cast -- in Sweden.
That was in 1978 or so.

The funny thing about that one is that it was planned to stamp steel, but
process changes along the way caused them to re-assign the die to forming
sheet-molding compound (SMC plastic). It still cost megabucks to machine.

--
Ed Huntress