Teardrops n Tiny Travel Trailers

Have been reading up on annealing on this site & desided to give it a try. I had some 1/2"X3/4" angle to play with. Spent over 30 minites with a candle on 8ft of angle getting it sooted. Used my torch to burn it off & melted it within 3" Learned that you dont try to burn all the soot off. The rest went OK. Shut the torch down to soot the outher angle & thought whats coming out of this torch???? SOOT. Only took about 5 seconds to soot that angle! Used them for inside door frames. This is just slicker than snot on a glass door knob. :D

little vicky...a tip, use the least amt of soot you can...it shouldn't take a minute to soot up the work piece with a candle...I found that if I soot the piece and then take a rag and lightly dust it, just leaving a trace of the soot it works much better...keep the torch moving and don't linger over any one spot and as the soot starts to disappear, move on...and yeah it'll make that 'loom-e-num bend likea wet noodle
madjack

Jack, Question for you . . . . Do you have to anneal the whole stik, or do you just anneal where you want to bend it around the radi?

Jim,

Jim, for the door trim I just annealed at the radius....about 8"s at a time...the top of our doors have a swoosh, so I did a portion of that also and the hatch trim all was annealed, mainly to relieve the "springback" on the unannealed trim(and fewer screws
madjack

hey madjack,
whudya do about the corners? i may be missing the boat on this one or do you just cut it a but it together?

...all of our corners are radiused which is why you anneal the AL so as to bend around that radius...(pieces around doors)the ends are put inna flat area metting for a jamb fit...pics in [url]http://tnttt.com/viewtopic.php?t=7436]this thread[/url]
madjack

Sorry to those who may have seen this post already, but I just want to give those that are afraid of using MadJacks "evil implements of destruction" an alternative to burning their fingers or torching the nice wood box they just built.

If you buy the right molding, you don't need to notch, heat, pound with a mallet, or burn your house down to get it bend without kinking. All of our molding is extruded for us in the dead soft state. We regularly bend our door tee molding to a 6 inch radius without any kinks. No fancy bending tools, just take your hands and wrap it over the door, and screw it in place.

It pains me to see a nice homebuilt teardrop with hammer marks all over the tee molding to hide the kinks.

Happy Building!

hey madjack,
what would be your suggestion for square corners for us weekender folks,cut em, bendum 90s, notchun, wavem magic wandum?would you still use angle and t mould?

Gabe, that is fine IF you are using T molding...the dead soft stuff is available many places....what we wanted was a flush finish so we made our own "Z" out of 2 pieces of angle which puts the seal on the inside ala Camp_Inn...don't have any dead soft 1.25 "Z" do ya...actually I found the annealing process to be fairly easy, didn't come close to setting any thing on fire since all pieces were set on cans on the table for annealing and unless you are really stupid you won't pick up anything that has been heated to 800degrees until it has cooled signifigantly


Critter...with square cut doors, the easiest thing would be to cut&miter...T on the door to form a seal and channel or angle on the jamb
madjack

For those who don't have the "want to do it myself" drive as Jack we do bend our door frames to custom shapes for customers. We use a shinker to do the corners. If you buy it in our Camp-Inn profile we don't charge more but supply the necessary template. That is what Jack meant that we would ship it unbent, we have to bend it somehow to make it reasonable to ship. We would have bent it to match his door opening.

Cary

Jack, I tried my hand at annealing some aluminum angle today. It is .063 3/4 X 3/4 inch and I must have done something wrong. I took a sample piece and heated it until it disintegrated just to see how much heat it would take to over heat. I was surprized that it took quite a while for it to be wasted. I tried sooting a piece and heated it until the soot was gone and then tried to make a bend. I went very slow and used a rubber mallet and it did not go well at all. You posted that you used a form so I gave that a try and made one out of 3/4 inch plywood. I heated the aluminum longer than it took for the soot to disappear with no bad results but that was one tough bend and I still had ripples in the side leg. I worked with it for a good while and got it looking ok but not OK. It was a tight radius, I will have to admit. Do you have any suggestions as to what I am doing wrong?

Jim, if the soot disappeared...it is annealed. That 3/4" leg is gonna be hard to bend ripple free for an inside bend...none of our stuff had a leg longer than 5/16 over all...what are you using it on...con you reduce the area in the radius (make it a thinner leg at that point)....we used both 1" & 3/4" angle and channel and cut the legs down so the where no longer than 5/16 overall...this was bent tighter than 6 "s with the addittion of some kerfs...on our front box doors which have a 2" radius we removed material in the radius ruducing the leg to about 1.8"....this worked to fit that 2" radius...no pics right now but maybe tomorrow
madjack

P.S. Cary, you are right, it took a 10 '+ piece to make one jamb and we had 3 per door to make the same type of seal that you have on the y'alls unit...it was a fun challenge and we got the jambs we wanted for 30 bucks a side

Jack, I should have read a little closer. I am using the full 3/4 inch leg and can see where it would work like a charm with a shorter leg. If I had done my homework and found out that there should only be a 5/16-1/4 inch leg, I wouldn't have stapled the aluminum so far from the edge. I have no choice now but to go with the 3/4 inch leg now so I will just do the best I can. The bend I was working on is on the very bottom rear



Thanks my friend for answering my question.

Jim, remember that as you whack and woll that trim that it will become work hardened...it can be re-annealed if need be and any use of a hammer should also use a couple of hardwood dollies, even if using a rubber/plastic/wood mallet....on thing we found on making tight radi was to use a 6" long dolly to bend with...use the dolly with 2 people...one pulling on the dolly to keep pressure and start bend...the other with a mallet, taping on the dolly as it rolls around the curve so that you get a pull anna tap on the same point at the same time
madjack

Jack, I didn't know you could reanneal it, that will be a super help right there. I think I have a way to make it work and if it does I will post some pictures and maybe it will help someone else. I can see real quick why you would want to keep pressure from the end. Thanks again Jack.