What have you done today with your Austin Seven

[Tony Griffiths]

This forum just keeps on giving. I have had the aluminium section in my garage for longer than I care to remember...

Any advice on how to tackle the tighter radii between the sides and rear...

I've just tried a sharper bend on a piece of scrap. With three annealings, the best I could do was a radius of about twelve inches - but that was with a crude wooden jig. Tomorrow, I'll see if I can improve - but it does look as if a metal jig to keep the section flat as well as bendable will be needed for a neat job; probably how it was done originally.

Thank you Tony. I really appreciate you putting in the effort. When I made the hood frame for my ORT, it involved a fair bit of improvisation to find ways to heat flat steel bar for bending flat. I bottled out before trying to bend the aluminium strip I bought at the same time for fear of wrecking it... 10 years later it is still in the cardboard tube in the corner of the garage!

Hi Nick,
Well, I've just had another go at it, using a simple soft-wood former cut to a radius that matched the curve from the back face of the Chummy body to the side face. It was bent by hand with around five annealings and, although it was just a rushed test piece, came out reasonably well. I had to use a hard rubber mallet to tap it flat occasionally. As Ducan said, any resistance stop and anneal again - and do it slowly, a little at a time. Obviously, with the long back strip that has to be bent at both ends, it would be a much more difficult thing to handle. Spending time making up up a jig, with the curve cut in hardwood and five to six closely-spaced (and padded) G-clamps, would be the way to go. I tried annealing and letting the aluminium both cool naturally and in water; I couldn't detect any difference in the resulting softness.