I have been thinking about getting into racing or observed trials for the past few months, I have enough motorcycles that I feel like I finally can devote one or two just to full fledged "race/trials" bikes. One of the things that I have been noticing about getting into racing/trials is that you need number plates to identify your rider number. Being a cheap-skate and having the "maker mentality" I decided to figure out a way to make my own. I looked all over the internet for suppliers of these number plates and ran across vintage AHRMA number plates that were made from steel. One of my close friends and college professor is moving soon, and sold me a bead roller and this was just the project to experiment with the new tool.
I bought six pieces of 0.023" steel and three pieces of aluminum from Speedy Metals. The sheets came to about $6-8 each for a piece that was 12" x 12."
Using my paper template, I transferred the design to the metal.
The bead roller is a fairly simple machine. Line up your metal to an adjustable fence, feed your material into the rollers, and turn the crank. It's that simple! If you have access to a lathe you can even make your own dies to make different embossed shapes.
Before feeding the metal into the bead roller, I knocked back any sharp edges on the metal ovals.
I started with one aluminum oval and fed it through the bead roller twice to get a raised edge, but just as I was finishing I noticed that my aluminum was flexed and would not lay flat anyone. Why would that happen?
Eh, not so good from the looks of things. I decided to hold off on finishing this project until I can ask someone what I could be doing wrong. But I am optimistic that these will look awesome on the bikes when they are finished.
From the front, the number plate looks great, but I will have to look more into proper use of a bead roller. I am pretty bummed about the internal stresses that are causing the aluminum to have that "whip."
Stay tuned to see how they look on the bikes!
Comments
Post a Comment