I made a small curbside find today, a 3" stack of sheet steel pieces
with a "FREE" sign taped to them. So into the truck they went. The
pieces are 6-10" wide by 30-36" long and range in thickness from 1/16"
to 1/4". Unfortunately, most of the thicker stuff is a bit curved,
bowed the long way anything from 1/2" to 1" at the center. I'd guess
from stress caused by shearing them to size.

Any suggestions how to flatten them out?

Tove

Tove Momerathsson wrote:

I made a small curbside find today, a 3" stack of sheet steel pieces
with a "FREE" sign taped to them. So into the truck they went. The
pieces are 6-10" wide by 30-36" long and range in thickness from 1/16"
to 1/4". Unfortunately, most of the thicker stuff is a bit curved,
bowed the long way anything from 1/2" to 1" at the center. I'd guess
from stress caused by shearing them to size.

Any suggestions how to flatten them out?

Hydraulic press?

GWE

You might try peening the short curved edge. I would try a hammer blow
every four inches along the three foot length. You will need an anvil or
something solid.
Are both edges sheared or only one edge? If one edge is flame cut and the
other is sheared that might be the problem.
Randy
"Tove Momerathsson" wrote in message
...
I made a small curbside find today, a 3" stack of sheet steel pieces
with a "FREE" sign taped to them. So into the truck they went. The
pieces are 6-10" wide by 30-36" long and range in thickness from 1/16"
to 1/4". Unfortunately, most of the thicker stuff is a bit curved,
bowed the long way anything from 1/2" to 1" at the center. I'd guess
from stress caused by shearing them to size.

Any suggestions how to flatten them out?

Tove

Tove Momerathsson wrote:

I made a small curbside find today, a 3" stack of sheet steel pieces
with a "FREE" sign taped to them. So into the truck they went. The
pieces are 6-10" wide by 30-36" long and range in thickness from 1/16"
to 1/4". Unfortunately, most of the thicker stuff is a bit curved,
bowed the long way anything from 1/2" to 1" at the center. I'd guess
from stress caused by shearing them to size.

Any suggestions how to flatten them out?

Tove
Bad news - best just ship them here.

Martin :-)
"I'm experimenting using a RR rail - across the center of the bow -
and the end - pulled up by another plank of steel. I'm hoping to re-curve
it back straight. Maybe I'll get an S curve - time will tell.

Martin
--
Martin Eastburn
@ home at Lion's Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net
NRA LOH, NRA Life
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder

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"Tove Momerathsson" wrote: (clip) Any suggestions how to flatten them out?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I wouldn't do anything right away. Chances are you will cut pieces off of
these strips, and use them up in various ways. Just do what you have to do,
with a hammer and anvil, to handle each job as it comes up. It may be hard
to get the full strips dead flat, but shorter lengths will probably be easy.
As you get more familiar with the way they act, the full strips will get
easier also.

Maybe you can design a project that NEEDS a bunch of curved strips. :-)

If these were curved when they were sheared they also have some twist
in them. Place one end in a big vise and untwist them with a big
Crescent wrench. There is a lot of residual stress in these and they
straighten quite easily. As the twist comes out so does most of the
curve. We correct hundreds, if not thousands of pieces a year with this
tecchnique. Leigh at MarMachine

Place the pieces in a stack with the bow up, and support the ends on 2
blocks of about 4" high or more. Place a weight of widely distributed mass
to create an inverse of the bow.
The weight object shouldn't create a small area/footprint of pressure.

The weight could be a bag of sand, cement, an unbound bundle of shingles or
other non-rigid mass. You may need to add some additional weight on top of
it, but a wide, soft weight should remove the bow, maybe in as few as a
couple of days.

WB
..................

"Tove Momerathsson" wrote in message
...
I made a small curbside find today, a 3" stack of sheet steel pieces
with a "FREE" sign taped to them. So into the truck they went. The
pieces are 6-10" wide by 30-36" long and range in thickness from 1/16"
to 1/4". Unfortunately, most of the thicker stuff is a bit curved,
bowed the long way anything from 1/2" to 1" at the center. I'd guess
from stress caused by shearing them to size.

Any suggestions how to flatten them out?

Tove




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Tove Momerathsson wrote:
I made a small curbside find today, a 3" stack of sheet steel pieces
with a "FREE" sign taped to them. So into the truck they went. The
pieces are 6-10" wide by 30-36" long and range in thickness from 1/16"
to 1/4". Unfortunately, most of the thicker stuff is a bit curved,
bowed the long way anything from 1/2" to 1" at the center. I'd guess
from stress caused by shearing them to size.

Any suggestions how to flatten them out?

Tove

I agree with the advice to not bother with them 'till you use them. Nice
find though, can't beat the deal.

I built a 27' dump trailer box (with darn little help, as it turned out)
out of square tube and sheet from oil tanks, sides and bottom each one
piece. There was some serious pulling on that one to get the sheet dwawn
down..

John

No expert here, but isn't the operation to flatten sheets called planishing?
I recently saw a planishing press, that had a matrix of points that
hammered down on to a not quite flat part, to make it flat. It left a
nice pattern of punch marks, like often seen on the brass plates of old
clocks etc.

Jordan

Tove Momerathsson wrote:

Any suggestions how to flatten them out?

In article , kwag98
@Xusachoice.net says...
Place the pieces in a stack with the bow up, and support the ends on 2
blocks of about 4" high or more. Place a weight of widely distributed mass
to create an inverse of the bow.
The weight object shouldn't create a small area/footprint of pressure.

The weight could be a bag of sand, cement, an unbound bundle of shingles or
other non-rigid mass. You may need to add some additional weight on top of
it, but a wide, soft weight should remove the bow, maybe in as few as a
couple of days.


While this would work with certain materials, some plastics
for instance, it's not going to have any effect on steel at
room temperature unless the load is great enough to exceed
the steel's yield strength. In which case the effect will
be immediate, but will be difficult to control. Much better
to control for deflection than applied load.

Ned Simmons