"Tim Wescott" wrote in message
...
Recently I've taken to making fuel tanks for model
airplanes out of old
Dole pineapple cans (because they're tinned on both
sides). The
construction is fairly simple: you make a tube, usually
pentagonal,
that's the main body of the fuel tank. Then you make end
caps for the
tube, you poke a few holes for the brass fuel lines, then
you solder
everything up.

Right now I'm making the end caps the same way you'd make
a box: I'm
cutting pie-shaped sections out of the corners, so that
everything folds
nicely with no excess material.

But I'd like to do this the way the "big boys" do: I'd
like to have an
end cap with no seams or slits or whatever. Is there a
way to accomplish
this with hand tools? Somehow I think if I just made a
female die out of
oak or whatever, and whacked a flat sheet into it with a
male die, that
I'd end up with something either ripped or wrinkled.

So: How? Or, what terms should I be searching on?

--
http://www.wescottdesign.com

TW:

You may want to look at a "dapping block" which uses
punches to drive sheet metal into correspondingly sized
hemispherical depressions. You could cut the
hemispheres out and solder on a ring for a neck which
would fit over your tube. That could could be threaded
or otherwise fixed onto your tube if you want to go that
far.

If you cut a circle of excess material in the dapped sheet
around your hemisphere, keep the punch in place and
hammer said surrounding material down to form a neck
assuming the diameter of the punch shaft is a little larger
than
the diameter of your tube.

Look up an image and the words will make more sense.
Dapping blocks are appropriate for malleable metals.
Harbor Freight is one site you may want to check for
an inexpensive offering.

If you have access to a punch press or more involved
tooling, there are other options.

Regards,

Edward Hennessey