If you are going to get into riveting, and doing a lot of it, save your hand, invest in a powered rivet gun. Pneumatic, electric, whatever you choose, a powered rivet gun will keep you from having to spend all that rivet gun money on painkillers and wrist braces.

This video sure does make sign making seem more approachable.

I really like this format. Your humor has always been great, but this "I'm showing my brother's kid how to do it" vibe is really cool.

The first nibbler I bought (to mod a computer case for my nephew) was a hand tool. The window in the computer case was incomplete when I bought my second nibbler. It was an attatchment for a hand drill. Like your pneumatic version, it threw the bites all over the place. Cleaning them up reminded me to wear gloves when dealing with metal. This also caused me to tape a shop vac hose to the drill to collect those bites. The ability to cut straight lines, then curves, and turn tight corners, all without changing tools, convinced me the nibbler was a brilliant invention.

The ratio for a caulk gun is the thrust factor that will be applied to the tube plunger from the force of you squeezing the handle. You apply 10 lbs of force, and it will apply 80 lbs to the plunger.

A 40 min metal working class? Yes please! It's just riveting content from beginning to end! Seriously though. This format is great. Please do more.

A Rip Taylor joke!?!?! Oh we are *old* my friend!

Love seeing someone use words like thaumaturgy in an everyday situation.

I am a sign maker that cuts 063 aluminum all day long. Spiral up metal single flute bit with 60 to 70 Inches per min. 20000 spindle speed. Light oil or misting fluid. But the key is a vacuum table. Stick it down so it can’t move at all and you will be an aluminum cutting pro…

For your holes, you can get any spade bit and grind the sides to whatever shape you want. You can make some interesting patterns in wood using the same technique.

I've been told that spot welding aluminum is not possible. But I saw a guy on line do it by putting a scrap of stainless steel on both sides. Spot welding is also known as resistance welding because it uses the metals resistance to electricity to heat the joint. (And aluminum has good conductivity but stainless does not.)

Im a automotive sheet metal worker and coach builder I can't say I disagreed with any of your statements and I watched the whole thing and learnt some things myself

Aah, we all have one - the bin of disused/unwise purchases that gather dust in a corner. Funny how, no matter how crowded the workshop gets, we never throw them away. That just guarantees that, two weeks after they go to the dump, you will have a job that can only be solved by that particular piece of cr&p, no matter how bad it performs.

I haven't tried them yet, but the spade bit photos on the Harbor Freight site show that they also have the cutting spurs... Cheap enough to find out how well they work.

Wesley Treat, for Mayor of all internet woodworkers/crafts ppl. Earnest, smart, no condescension, and a well of useful info and real no bullshit commentary on tools and techniques, not to mention entertaining. You have made me more confident in simply just beginning so many times.

Wow! Thank you for this. I feel like I've learned a decade or more worth of wisdom during these 40 mins.

Sandpaper on Aluminum edges seems a great way to come up with new cuss words.

One thing to note, if you are bending aluminum go with a 3000 or 5000 series alloy as they are softer and bend easily. 6061 alloy will tend to crack and break when bending as it is a harder alloy.

The trick that 99% of internet experts (and too many real experts, too) fail to mention: Cutting sheet metal with a jigsaw is *noisy.* Not a big deal, but you better plan accordingly. (Example: If you're not working in a dedicated workshop like Wesley but in your own home, warn your spouse before cutting, and try not to do it during times when there is something they want to watch on TV.)

Regarding hole saws, my job as an industrial electrical engineer (since the mid 1970s) meant I had to use them on a regular basis. I never found one type that really pleased me - thin replaceable blade ones used to burn out the teeth and thicker bladed ones (e.g.Sandvik etc.) were darned expensive (and still burned out teeth!) Recently though, after decades of going through all sorts of arrangements, I found the ABRACS brand. With one arbor, you can fit many hole size cobalt blades (virtually without tools) and I've cut even 2 inch holes in steel I beams` without any tooth damage. Worth the investment, and you don't have to buy all the sizes at once, although they do make sets with multiple sized blades, arbor and pilot drill all in a handy case. I'm not sponsored - just very impressed!

I went to one of the top welding schools in the country at the time, had recruiters from underwater welding schools asking me to go to there school after getting my 2 year degree, been welding for over 40 years, a lot of difficult jobs, learned a lot but no matter how much one thinks they know someone always knows a different way :) built a cabana once with no welder & I felt lost, what you are doing is old school cool! , yes there is a skill set but also some artistic talent to what you are doing! the cool thing about no welding is no distortion control, the rivet look is very cool! the only small thing I can add about Aluminum is cleaning with acetone works great for my tig welding, thanks for the cool video!!!!

A good horizontal bandsaw was the first big investment in my shop, and I still use it all the time. Definitely worth the extra cost to get a swivel head style, in my opinion, it makes changing the angle sooo much easier.

Wesley you are contributing to my tool addiction 😳 not to mention my skill set. I thank you sir. 😎

As a welder and plumber, I have complimented many welders and plumbers. I have also held my tongue many times when a weld looked OK but far beneath my standard or the plumbing wasn't done the way I would do it. But there is a lot of crap out there, welds that looks like bird shit, insufficient penetration, too much heat, plumbing that has inappropriate materials, poor routing, rubbing that might create a leak inside a wall years later, etc. I usually let people know when their welding or plumbing is garbage. Any way, I haven't seen you weld or plumb but if the reaction you get is so bad, you might have some Dunning-Kruger effect going on. Professionalism should include a certain amount of pride in craftsmanship that will make you strive to produce a product that will impress a professional. When I look at something I have made, the things that stand out to me are the details that didn't work out exactly as I planned or the one spot where my welds aren't as pretty as I like. A consumer that isn't a welder or plumber would almost certainly never notice the details that stick out like a sore thumb to me (because I know they are there). Another professional will notice those spots if I point it out or they examine it carefully but I have really fucked up if the first thing a pro says is "what happened here" referring to one of my less than perfect spots. Back to your video, hole saws can be great if you know what you are doing. I like a nice secure arbor to reduce chatter and walking. If you look at the saw material, it's like a bandsaw blade with the teeth pushed in and out in alternating fashion. If they cut a hole a bit bigger than you like, you can grind off a little of the outward bent teeth and sometimes that makes the hole saw cut smoother too. If you have a reasonable budget and need to do stuff like fishmouth thin wall tubes, look at rotary broaches (I think they are also called annular cutters). The cut quality is unmatched but you need a milling machine or a tube notcher to hold everything rigid during the cut. When drilling a hole for a rivet or self tapper, I would lay it out and use an automatic center punch to give your drill something to follow. I would also look at center drills and maybe extended length center drills. They are much more rigid with their large shank and I think the tip is a little better at following a center punch than a standard 118° drill tip. With all that said, I have done my fair share of sheet metal work and while I might have used slightly different tools, the only real.critique I can give is that the nose of the rocket is a focal point and you could have rolled one long piece to the radius of the rocket side, then bent it in your finger brake to create the point of the nose. That would be more symmetrical, less rivets. An average customer might never notice that but as a fabricator, that's the detail that sticks out, not because it looks bad or isn't a fine way to do it, it just makes me ask why. A reasonable answer would be "I didn't have a long enough piece of aluminum" or "I like rivets more than I like symmetry" but a lot of the time I hear stuff like "I didn't think of doing it that way" and I don't like to hear that from an artist or craftsman because that seems like a lack of creativity and the job of turning raw materials in to a quality product should use every bit of creativity you've got.

Great presentation. I recommend using peanut oil on cutting tools. It prevents the aluminum from heating from friction and smearing on the cutting edges. I purchased special applicators on swing saws at UTC's Extrusion Plant in Coldwater, MI. The applicator applied a mist on the blade just as it entered the cut. It increased the time between sharpening many times. We went through 100,000 lbs of extrusions in 3 lines every day. That is a lot of cutting. I also had the same equipment installed on a unique machine that drilled two 1/16" holes in a small button called a collar extender. The peanut oil made all the difference in the world. The drill bits that use to break off once an hour lasted a day or more. Lard works okay. Lubricity is fine and the cost is low. Biggest draw back is it gets rancid and that is not a good thing. Peanut oil is cheap, works well, easy to find, and unlike oil, cleans up easily with soap and water. Saw blades for aluminum production are ground to a triple chip configuration. It provides a smoother cut with little or no burr. Love the sign. 😁😎

Did a demo last year, found an old wooden coke crate full of clecos and the tool. There were hundreds of them, about four different sizes. Turns out the guy that lived there was air force, who worked on planes. One of the best things I’ve found in a demo.

Great video, just subbed! For deburring, my go-to is a convolute wheel mounted on a pedestal grinder. Some people call them ScotchBrite wheels or Beartex wheels, but there are several brands, widths, diameters, hardnesses, and grit types to suit your application. I use my 1"w x 6"d wheel for deburring sheet metal, machinings, structural metals, sharpening knives, polishing hammer faces and bucking bar faces, and many other uses. With a full sheetmetal shop, weld shop, and fabrication shop, that wheel gets used more than any other tool. They're not cheap, but if you get the right one for what you're doing, it will last a long time. They work better and much faster than any method I've found.

When using tubes like the JB-Weld, don't open the cap: unfold the other end, snip a tiny corner and squeeze the product out, then crimp the end up again with pliers and refold. This is a far more airtight method, especially for highly volatile products like shoe glue.

Totally on board with you on this, many people over look working with alumium (that's so much easier to type), when making products they want to sell. I fell into it by accident, never looked back, before that, chaning a fuse was about as hands on as I got with anything. If you have a bench grinder, get a fibre wheel for it for deburring, it does it in a fraction of a time. As for the CNC on alu, if you want to take decent cuts in it, get DLC coated bits, single flutes, they cut clean, fast and no lubricant required. I have numerous vids on my channel about this, I cut up to 3mm thick in single pass with these daily. They'll certainly do the 1-2mm no problen and fast! i cut 2mm alu 24k RPM, 1500mm per minute cut speed, with a 3mm (1/8th) bit 90% of the time. Thats on 1050, 5000, 6000 series alloys! A lot of 1050, that's my go to and that;s the one they tell you, you can't machine - I have videos on that too!

as a handyguy, I appreciate your inclusion of simple tools. creative!

All good information! You are correct, It's not as difficult as most people think. the most difficult part of getting into metalworking projects is to stop overthinking things. Thanks for sharing!

Thank you this and every other video you have made, it's been incredibly valuable for my growth as a maker. I made my first 14' illuminated sheet metal marquee sign last year and it was incredibly satisfying, especially spraying it with the weathering fluid you suggested. One thing I've been doing with my aluminum project enclosures is flow drilling, it lets you make a tapped hole in thin material and saves on rivet nuts. I appreciate you!

In the best way possible, you remind me of Alton Brown.

I used those big metal shears (yellow handle, straight cut) to make aero mods for my cars out of galvanized sheet steel flashing, flat and l-shaped aluminum bars, pop rivets, and slotted hex washer head sheet metal screws. Used pliers, screwdriver, and hammer to fold over the edges to keep them nice and safe. Purely for fuel efficiency. Got 4.25% improvement in mpg at 55mph out of my 05 Accord from a subset of the mods.

This is why I subscribed to this channel to start with love the sign episodes

Another reason besides the obvious to wear safety glasses: aluminum isn’t magnetic unlike other metals so it could mean the difference between the ER doc using a magnet to take out the shard out of your eye or digging it out 🫣

A trick if you use an air nibbler. Get a small drink bottle with the neck opening the same size or slightly smaller than the nibbler head. force it on maybe with a little heat till it stays. This will catch almost all of chips.

Nice! I've been welding (and a welding supervisor, and a weld engineer, of sorts) since the 1980's. I was trained in school (half of the welders reading this are already thinking I know nothing, now), have a stack of qualification certs bigger than I can measure with a 300mm rule (pissing more of them off), and I am not a great welder. If it meets requirements, that is what matters. Your welds are fine. With all of this, I just riveted my new shed together. Faster, easier, did the job. Fit, tack with a Cleco, drill the rest, lay in sealer, reassemble, and rivet. Fast. Easy. Sufficient, and will never leak. Used the hydraulic shear, break, and Beverly at work for the flat sections, used an air hand shear for the galvalum siding, and an air nibbler for a couple penetrations. Greenlee chassis punches for other penetrations. I did do the edges with a flap style scotchbrite disk on a grinder and a hand file. With that, I learned a few more things to try next time. (and from the comments, as well) Thanks

This video couldn't have come at a more perfect time. I just got over 30 000 rivets last month and I don't know what to do with that many. Now I know something I can use them for and at the same time fill my walls with fun stuff! :D

great... now I gotta buy new tools and add them to my collection

Thanks for all the tips! Always amazed by your sign work and patinas you do on each one.

Great video! I built a thermoforming oven a few years ago and this would have been extremely helpful. Thanks!

Harbor freight paddle bit Warrior brand still have the spurs. Great video!!

Safety tip when working with cut sheet metal: wear cut resistant gloves or leather gloves. It keeps you from getting small cuts in your hands and big cuts if the sheet slips and it hits you wrong. Jeans or another sturdy pants are also advised. Appropriate footwear means closed toed shoes unless you want to lose some toes and have them reattached if a sheet slides and falls on your foot. It will hut. A lot. You're gonna have a bad time. Steel toes aren't needed, but I would advise them, but I like my feet nice and intact.

Thanks for all the info!

Great video!!! Thank you!!! I love working with aluminum for all of the reasons you mentioned! Great ideas and techniques! I’m going to use those!!!

Great video. Knipex pliers wrench works great for bending small pieces of metal and not damaging the surface.

28:10 my great grandpa machined his own hole cutter. its essentially a very tiny fly cutter you might find on a mill, but its very small and its balanced so you can free hand it. he made a very tiny cutting tooth for it (like a inner groove cutter nub) so it has a kerf of maybe 1/8 inch or a bit less. it has the option to use a pilot bit or not so you can have an unmarred disc if you are chucked up in the drill press or use a pilot bit for free handing it. its pretty awesome. to adjust the size of the hole, you just turn a screw which moves the cutter in or out from the center. its basically what your spade cutter is doing, only mine is adjustable and has one cutter nub instead of the two on a spade bit. it seems like you just want a tiny fly cutter

I make roofing from time to time and I use nibler, and few years back I boght one wich have set of two cuters- first is nibler make those quater moon she..t and second make same springi croll like Ur shear. And work realy good. I use it all the time.

Harbor Freight sells those spade bits with the burrs under the brand "Warrior." Right now they are $6.97 for a set of 13!

I appreciate that you took time to teach

Great video as always, Wesley! A tip about feeds and speeds: I use the “tools today” tool database, which is available on their website. It has all the feeds and speeds for every Amana bit they sell. Not using an Amana tool? Simply choose the tool with the same attributes as yours (say, a 1/4 radius, 2 flute, down cut bit) and you’re golden. This database has never let me down and has saved me hours and money for sure.

This is one of the best aluminum metalworking videos I've come across!

Aloha Wesley, and one more thing….at Home Depot or Lowes….in the soldering section or welding, they sell these rods(labeled for different metals)for like brazing or “welding” with a torch. They sell those rods for alumium lol, too but they sell out fast. Try a small piece and bash it with a hammer to test the strength….simple to use, try it out Braddah!? Mahalo nui….

I enjoyed the video. In the steel yard we would crank up the stick welder and drag a new rod across the aluminum sheet and it would perforate a line to break off for recycling. Crude but quick

Bless you, Wesley! What a friendly, generous and useful video!

Loved this! Really does make it seem so much more approachable that I would have thought. Thanks Wesley!

Really great instructions, keep it up!

Aloha Wesley! Eh Braddah, the first immediate thought I had….Why not take that spade bit and grind down the inside flat spots concave to the shank to create that point on the outside edge? see if that will work. I’m an aircraft mechanic and in my field and the stuff I have to do to get the job done, you don’t always have the right tool so my brain is always thinking on the fly with whatever I’m doing of modifications to a tool or something off the shelf in a store ….like metal cake spatulas to get under sealed aircraft panels since they are thin and bend like spring steel, cutting box end wrenches,especially ther geared type….drilling a hole in it and making a hinged point to get into a tight space at bolts. Many mods to tools we’ve done could have made me or the guys I worked with a little richer because next thing you know, Craftsman or SnapOn added it to their tool inventory long after we had made the tool(“You Snooze, you Lose” especially if you don’t know the right channel to get a patent tool idea/invention you made). Mahalo nui loa for sharing your knowledge, skill and time with me(us)!

@35:55 The ratio you're referring to is the **thrust ratio** of a caulking gun. It measures the force applied to the tube piston with each trigger pull. Here's how it works: - **Thrust ratio**: It indicates how much force is generated when you squeeze the hand trigger. For example, an 8:1 thrust ratio means that for every 8 pounds of force you apply to the trigger, the caulking gun exerts 1 pound of force on the caulk tube. - **Choosing the right ratio**: The thicker the caulk material, the higher the thrust ratio should be. Higher ratios (e.g., 18:1) work more efficiently for thicker sealants. Keep in mind that this doesn't apply to powered caulking guns, as they don't require manual squeezing.

Excellent video, so many great tips.

Outstanding video! A lot of really useful tips and tricks, even for experienced metalworkers. Subscribed!

Brit here, and language pedant. I am totally on board with the name Alumium - indeed the first person to isolate this metal, Sir Humphry Davy, called it Alumium, so yep. I suspect you knew this. Lets make this a thing!

I loved the reference at 6:55 "I feel like Rip Taylor". It is an oldy but a goody!

Awesome video Wesley, thank you!! You answered a lot of questions that I've had.

Great presentation. Thank you.

Excellent tutorial, IMHO. Loved the Bender gif

Really interesting video. Thanks, Wesley.

This was fantastic! I could watch this all day.

top job, love your work mate

I bought a jet version of that band saw 20 years ago. I use it upright 90% of the time. I have had nibblers for years. Mostly used for body work. Pain in the ass tool. We use with a vacuum so its not a pain in in the foot tool. A few years ago i bought a nibbler that goes in a drill. It is so much mor versitile because you can rotate the head and drill to get infinite combinations compared to the air nibbler.

You are a true master at your craft❤

Fantastic video thanks for making it

Toolstation in the UK sell Minotaur flat bits with the spurs and there's a budget brand called Toolpak that do Titanium coated flat bits also with spurs, also available on Toolstation's site.

I have a nibbler like the manual one you show about 3/4 way through the video, it’s very handy. I also have a manual cutter that cuts like your electric shears but for more intricate cuts.

An impressive amount of knowledge in a very nice format. Thank you very very much. Great job, btw.

I really loved this video!! As someone with zero knowledge of the subject, it's really cool to see so many different ways to do the same thing. I'd love yo see more videos in this format!

You can braze aluminum using aluminum "rods" and a propane gas plumbers torch! It really works and there are some videos on youtube. Worth a watch! I used this technique recently to seal an old pot that was leaking.

Outstanding! Thanks.

Thanks for the education

So many cool tips, makes me itch to try it out. Always a fan of your art. Thanks for sharing, fellow nerd!

So, I don’t really have any experience with any of this but occasionally using a pop rivet or tinsnips, yet found this video interesting and entertaining….thank you Wesley! Seems like something I would find enjoyable to try making something out of aluminum.

Really enjoyed this….fantastic 👍

Newer nibblers have catch bags for the sharp chunks.😊Good to see you Wes.

Good info, thanks!

My favorite hand seamers (bending tongs) are my set of 90° feels natural and give leverate to really get a good sharp bend. In the trades we decided to just use stainless mandrel stainless rivets for our jobs. They have better hold than aluminum and you dont have to worry about rust weeping or aluminun galv interaction

That is the most I have leaned in the shortest period in a long time! I had to set some counter sunk rivets recently in .100" aluminum. Using an 1/8" Dewalt countersink tool made for wood worked just fine. Getting the rivet flush is more of making a diameter Gage as a "check tool" (or a caliper) and matching OD as you plunge the taper. Also bonding metals can also be done as you say. My go to is 3M 08115 Panel Bond. They use it in automotive construction and repair. It will not come apart! Needs it's own 2 part caulk gun Joining your Patron, take my money LOL

For hand sanding, Festool makes a great foam backed sandpaper. I recently got some for a table I built and it is a game changer. For things that have protrusions or corners the foam helps the sandpaper conform. I used to have a hard time not sanding the finish off corners when I was finishing things but it really is a game changer. Not cheap though! but a good product to be aware of.

Thanks for doing this video. We love your stuff so much! Say hi to the kitten for us!

Great video. I'm just 'testing the waters' with metal working. I'm subbed to you now.

The Beverly throatless shear. Even the HF knockoff is not bad. It’s an amazing tool that takes up very little space in the shop and makes beautiful curves or straight lines.

Such a Treat to watch! Love your videos man. Always happy to see a new video pop up.

Wonderful video; truly!!

I really appreciate this video, thank you!

Love the video Wesley! I actually loved watching your doughnut sign video and makers sign video so much that I started making a Marquee sign in February. I found spade bits with the fangs on Amazon and they were great. I drilled about 100 holes. Keep up the great work!🔥

Thanks for this great tutorial Wesley! Learned a bunch of useful stuff. Hope to see you at Maker Camp.

This was bloody great! Made metal seem much less scary!

I built a trailer with custom spare tire carrier and tongue jack mount and a modular sport rack for bikes and kayaks that attaches to the trailer with no welding. Metal cut off saw and a drill press basically.

Great film. Super informative. Mahalo for sharing! : )

Finally!!!!!!! Love it!