How Do You Cut Thin Sheet Metal

The illustrations are for a small bracket but i have cut 3 foot.

How do you cut thin sheet metal.

It cuts metal almost as easily as a scissors cuts paper. It may not be an obvious choice but fitted with the right blade a circular saw is a great metal cutting tool. You can cut mild steel up to about 3 8 in. If you ve got a lot of straight cutting to do buy tin snips like the one shown in photo 4.

Cut steel between 16 gauge and 8 gauge with an electric jigsaw with a metal cutting blade or with a hacksaw. There are some cuts that you can do with decent tin snips. Cut metal with your circular saw. Step 2 clamp your steel to a work bench or sawhorse.

And the long blades make it easy to cut straight and leave a smooth edge. Simply line up your chisel along the line you are going to cut and strike the back of it with a hammer. These photo steps show that it can be done using a utility knife. They look like scissors and work fine with sheet metals like brass aluminum tin steel etc.

Thick using a ferrous metal cutting blade. If you ve hit it hard enough the chisel will cut the sheet metal if it s thin enough. In our test it cut through rebar like a hot knife through butter. For thinner gauge metal you may want to use a piece of scrap wood as backing so that the stainless steel sheet does not bend during cutting.

Using a chisel and hammer is the most basic form of cutting sheet metal. Hot metal chips will fly everywhere. As you cut one side of the sheet metal will ride up and over the lower jaw. For thin sheets of metal you can use tin snips to cut through it.

Then grip the saw with both hands and push the blade through the metal to cut it. To cut straight lines use an electric saw. How to cut thin sheet metal and keep it flat. Such as straight cut snips left cut the right cut etc.