Making a headlight bezel

[jvo]

Duane took it to try on the headlight bucket so we could get a feel for what it would really look like.
It is now 8 1/8 inside diameter, and 6 3/8 inside diameter, but to me it still looks a little "fat".
Have to see it on the car. Then make another just like it.

Making it smooth afterwards is the least of my worries. That's the easy part.

You can see now that the dolly can register right down to bottom out on the hammer form, the metal becomes much smoother as you're now hammering for the most part against the plywood.

Then just go round and round with many lighter blows tapping every 1/4 inch sideways and it becomes quite uniform.

You can run your finger around it and feel any highs or lows, and address that particular area with a few more even spaced blows.

It's not rocket science. Just consumes some of your precious time.

I'll add one more comment. I cut the middle out of the blank, cause I figured I was done at that point, and I could finish up better without the centre in place.

I was wrong. It became much harder to keep it down in the hammer form once I removed the centre.

Now that I have my "dolly" ground to what I think is the proper shape, ( unless we decide to put more crown into it), I will try to pretty much finish up before cutting the centre out of the blank.

 

[CDNflatlander]

As I mentioned in another post, thank you for sharing…what a great resource. Thanks for your efforts.

 

[Roddy]

You make it look easy, thanks for the lesson. I've saved every potential "dolly" I've ever found, the latest was a big wedge pin I found rusting on the roof of a high rise.

 

[jvo]

I hadn't heard from Duane for a long time and almost forgot about this project. We got together this morning and I got my head wrapped around it again.
The original "kit" headlight rings had these three spring clips on the back side, but this one blew off when a truck went by I think. Got bent up a bit so I tried to straighten it.
I started trying to fold the outer circumference in with a hammer and dolly but it just didn't feel right and the metal wasn't coming around to a tighter radius like I figured it should.
SO, I figured before I screw it up totally I should maybe finish the one I made.

 

[jvo]

Here you can see the original measure 21 gauge with paint on it.

In the pic above, you can maybe see the difference in diameter. The original is flared out more, and has a fatter profile when viewed head on. The headlight bucket is 8 1/8, and this ring is now finished to 8 1/16 bare.

In the pic above, you can really see the fat profile. I think the new one will look much better.

With a little luck, those tabs will slide right past the headlight to attach to a couple springs to hold it in place.

It is about to receive a final planishing to make it smooth. All those little pock marks from hammering from the inside out now need to be pushed back flat to the surface of the ring.

 

[jvo]

The planishing dolly is just a chunk of 1/2 round bar, bent to the proper arc, and has the sharp ends ground smooth, etc.

I used a couple different body hammers, then a slapper on it to get it smooth. Then just sanded with 100 grit.

If I wanted to get crazy, I could get a vixen file and really go to town on it. It's smooth enough for some primer and sanding right now.

And here is the second one. We had a discussion earlier about how 18 gauge would work. Well, I have used up all my stash of 19 gauge so all I had left was this 18 gauge blank. It doesn't seem to hammer with any more difficulty, but if you look at the "tucks" that I have to shrink down, there are quite a few little spots that are wanting to fold over on themselves.

If you look at the earlier pics of the first one at this stage, there weren't any tight little tucks wanting to fold over each other. I'm not too worried about that at this point, as that outer part will be trimmed off at the end.

With a little luck, it will look like the first one by this time tomorrow.

As Wray Schelin says, the first one is art. Making the second one exactly the same as the first one is metal shaping.