Fracturing Aluminum

On Mar 14, 8:01*pm, Brian Whatcott wrote:
Flash wrote:
wrote in message
....
We're making propellers over on the Chugger's Group. *Right now guys
are mostly gluing-up the blanks that will become propellers. *One of
the things that needs doing is creating the TEMPLATES that will be
needed in the final stages.

*... Glue the pattern to the paper, cut it out with a scalpel. *Or glue it to the metal, SCORE the metal and flex the metal back & forth
until it breaks along the line of the score mark.

"Doesn't work," sez the Big Fella on the phone. ...
-R.S.Hoover

RS, * drawn aluminum has a type of grain pattern, like wood. *Mebbee you're
plastering the cans down in the wrong orientation? *Try cutting 90-degrees
different?

Flash

If you don't want to use scissors on thin aluminum shimstock, perhaps a
hardboard, oil-tempered even, would do the trick. * *That needs a
jigsaw, no doubt.

Brian W

The thinner, the better, for this purpose. I made my templates way
too thick. They worked, but I'd never do it that way again.

http://users.lmi.net/~ryoung/Sonerai/Carve_Prop.html

And scissors on Coors brand shim stock is fine for straight lines, but
it's not accurate enough on curves, IMHO, for this sort of work, plus
it tends to crimp the edge.

If you can't manage this on aluminum can, try it on card stock with a
brand new X-Acto, then varnish the results.

Anymore, I scribe and snap ALL my aluminum cuts. The knives used to
scribe plexiglass are handy for this, and the ELFA brand truly is
superior to any other I've found. But again, as Veeduber pointed out,
on beer can stock, a sharp machinist's scribe is all you need.