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?

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