How to make your own sheet metal gutters and roofing elements

Recommendation points

• How to bend metal correctly
• Galvanizing and polymer coating: what are the differences
• The first simplest product
• Handmade: how to bend a gutter segment
• How to roll a sheet into a tube
• Funnel making technique

Roofing iron is perhaps the cheapest way to arrange a drainage system and protect the roof ridge. The parts are so varied and can be so unique that they are often made on site. What is needed for this, what skills and equipment, we will tell you today.

How to bend metal correctly

Roofing elements, as a rule, are hidden from the eyes of passers-by and no claims for the decorative part are made against them. This makes it possible to manually manufacture parts using templates, but you have to constantly adjust the product with a mallet..

This is not the best approach: the fold lines and the whole product are wavy, and working on one part can take a long time. For piece goods, this is quite tolerable, but if you have to drain the whole house with a drain, you should get the necessary equipment and devices at your disposal.

Today press brakes occupy their own segment in the professional tool market and are available everywhere. Their price is quite high, but only on our own, proven equipment, you can make parts of excellent quality. Renting a listogib is also an option, but a machine that passes from hand to hand will not have the required accuracy and reliability.

Galvanizing and polymer coating: what are the differences

For most modern machine tools, it makes no difference what type of sheet metal is bending on it. But there are difficulties in working with metal coated with a polymer composition. With galvanizing it is easier, because its protective layer is more resistant to abrasion and damage. Therefore, nothing prevents you from bending galvanized steel with blows or crawling along a rusty template – the main thing is that there are no deep scratches.

The coating with a special paint has a lower mechanical strength, it is thinner and is relatively easy to peel off. It will not be the best solution to bend polymer-rolled products on old sheet bending machines with defects in rolls, swing beams or with loose hinges, and even more so, such metal should not be processed with a mallet. Likewise, you should not use any improvised devices that can damage the “anticorrosive” film.

The first simplest product

First, we will make the simplest roofing element – the ridge. So that he subsequently lies flat and tightly on the roof, first determine the angle of rotation by attaching a long thin rail to one of the slopes.

The width of the ridge shelves is from 15 to 30 cm, respectively, you will need a strip twice as wide with an allowance of 10 mm on each side. This edge may have irregularities with a tolerance of 2-3 mm, so an even cut is not necessary. Mark three longitudinal lines: the center of the ridge and both edges. Place the strip in the center on the edge of the table and press with a bar under the two clamps along the marking line.

From below, under the protruding edge of the sheet, you need to put a flat board and bend the shelf upward, observing the marked angle of rotation ± 10?. Now the workpiece must be released and shifted back so that the edge marking line falls exactly on the edge of the bar. Again we clamp the workpiece and tighten the clamps well, and then we go along the edge with a mallet, turning it perpendicularly up.

Edging is necessary to reinforce the ridge profile. For their manufacture, you can also use a rail-rule, pressed through a bar: the wedge-shaped end of the bar will allow you to make the edge bend more than 90 °. After preliminary bending of both edges, they must be laid on a wooden sleeper and beaten off with a mallet, flattening the bend. In a variety of bending machines, this operation is performed with one pass of the carriage of the roller edger.

When processing the edge by hand, go from one edge to the other in sequence, and then smooth out the visual irregularities with your hands. Already at this stage, one can think about partial mechanization and the creation of a primitive machine tool. For example, if a bending bar is made of metal or hardwood and fixed on two-axis hinges, the processing will go much faster and more clearly..

Handmade: how to bend a gutter segment

For the manufacture of metal parts with a radius profile, a template should be prepared in advance; it is not realistic to carry out such work on the knee.

Take an inch tube, weld two rods of fittings at its ends as driving handles. Make a cut along the seam of the tube with a grinder, then sandpaper the edges well, you can even glue it with a silicone hose that is loose in two.

Clamp the strip of roofing iron at the edge of the table, insert the end into the cut and rotate the tube 360? So that the “straight” petal in the center of the twist is parallel to the rest of the sheet.

You can form a tray with a rack and pinion pipe bender, or you can use a 200 mm loose pipe. We bend the smooth edge of the workpiece to 90 °, press the side against the table with the pipe wall and straighten the iron with a mallet. We bring the twisted edge with our hands, bending it slightly inside the arc. Remove the workpiece from the template and press the rectangular fold.

Such an ebb can be made in segments of 1–1.5 meters, which are then easily joined at the installation site and fastened with a cutter. The presence of two stiffening ribs will not allow the tray to bend between the fasteners under the weight of the ice, and a hidden groove will additionally strengthen the drain on hooks of a special shape.

How to roll a sheet into a tube

What if we are focused on making even more complex elements: receiving funnels and pipes? Of course, first it is better to practice on the segments, but otherwise these skills are quite understandable..

Closed-surface products such as pipes, tanks and funnels are assembled in so-called seam joints. The fold, for simplicity, is a lock with which you can join the edges quite firmly and even tightly. A regular (single) fold is made as a fold at the edge with two folds. On different sides of the joint, the folds are directed in the opposite direction.

Usually for downpipes, folds are made with a fold width of 4 to 10 mm. The edges of the strip are beaten off on a steel angle, then the sheet is rolled up, the folds are interlocked and pressed tightly with a hammer when the pipe is put on a mandrel.

There is only one difficulty in the manufacture of pipes – to ensure the possibility of their joining with each other. Therefore, before twisting the sheet, its short edge is straightened on a platform with a small sill, so that one end of the pipe turns out to be thinned by a couple of millimeters. Also, pipes can be connected on seams, but they cannot be fastened in place in this way: a large segment of the drain is collected at the bottom, and then assembled.

Of course, manufacturers of bending equipment have a lot to offer in this regard. For the manufacture of locks, there are folded-rolled carriages, and the metal is rolled into a pipe on a longitudinal roller listogib. For edge thinning, beading machines or separate pairs of rolling rolls can also be used..

Funnel making technique

If you understand that the seam connection is the essence of almost any tin product, you can let your imagination run wild and assemble complex products from several simpler ones. An example of this is all kinds of funnels, tees and elbows..

The funnel consists of two short pipe sections of larger and smaller diameters. They are assembled like ordinary pipes, except that their edges are expanded outward by 8–12 mm. Subsequently, these bent sides are used for the further manufacture of folds, or, if there are no complaints about tightness, the hard edges are folded and fastened together with a cutter.

The riveting technique of different products can differ significantly, but in fact it is not as important as the correct drawing up of the pattern. All blanks should be cut only according to the template. For example, for the central part of the funnel – a truncated cone – the pattern is a segment of the ring, where the length of the inner arc is determined by the diameter of the drain, and the outer one is determined by the diameter of the receiving bell.

Unfortunately, the equipment for the production of such products has a very narrow specialization, and therefore is not available due to both high prices and low prevalence. However, all products made of tin and sheet metal, be it a bucket, a tank or an ordinary ridge, can also be made manually, the machines only facilitate some operations.