From: John Kimmel
Date: 7/19/2004 10:25 PM Central Daylight Time
Message-id:

If you really want to hydroform parts, and you live in the vicinity of
Portland, OR, then go to Usher Enterprises in North Plains. They do the
hydroforming for Van's.

You shouldn't hydroform the parts however, you should form them by hand.
All you need is a plastic mallet, a ball peen hammer and lead straps
about 1" x ½" x 18" (in addition to the formblocks you've already made.
I presume you included a 3° springback angle in your formblock). I
made these coaming formers out of 5052-H-32 by hammering it over a cheap
and dirty plywood formblock:

http://home.teleport.com/~guy_noir/i...ng/coaming.JPG

After I formed the first part, I shaved the formblock down about .050 to
make the opposing former so it would nest into the first former.

These photos show a couple parts I reverse engineered from mylars so I
could use a waterjet to cut formblocks. The parts themselves are hand
formed over the formblocks.

http://home.teleport.com/~guy_noir/i...og%20frame.jpg
http://home.teleport.com/~guy_noir/i...tures%2037.jpg
http://home.teleport.com/~guy_noir/i...tures%2038.jpg

This is a series of photos showing the procedure for forming a part used
on Noon Patrol Nieuports. After forming, the parts were heat treated
(7075 T-6).

http://www.eaa292.org/noon_patrol/jan_00.html



How did you heat treat the parts?

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired