The Tray

Tools & materials

· Laser cutter
· Scrap plywood for your buck
· Pen or pencil
· Disc sander
· Drill with Philips head
· 2 x Philips head screws
· Square
· Aluminium
· Aviation snips
· File
· Vice
· Plastic mallet
· Forstner bit
· Drill press
· Silvo
· Rags

Step 1, Prepare your corner guides

Laser cut your corner guides, using the provided digital file.

In our case, it was already printed and we were able to borrow it from someone else.

Step 2, Mark the corners onto your buck

Using the provided pieces of plywood for your buck, it is now time to mark the curved corners.

Take a moment to consider the size of the radius you want your corners to have. Keep in mind that the tighter the radius, the harder you will need to work to achieve neat corners as the shrinking aluminium will have less material to shrink into. Conversely, the greater the radius, the easier it will be to achieve a nicer finish.

Mark your buck.

Marking the curved corners

Corners marked

Step 3, Sanding

Taking the 2 bucks you will be using between your partner and yourself, place one buck directly on top of the other. Imagining a line running down the middle of the length of the buck, and after having ensured that the bucks line up directly, drill the 2 screws through the top buck into the lower buck – the screws should be about 100mm apart.

This will help your bucks (moulds) to be as similar to each other as possible, as opposed to sanding and working them individually and probably coming out with slightly different final products.

Using the disc sander, gently press the corner of your buck up against the sander. Gently manoeuvre the buck so that the buck is continually moving along the sander, working from one side of the corner to the other. The aim is try and avoid inducing flat patches along your curved corners.

Repeat with all corners.

Sanding down the curved corners

Bucks screwed together, pre second sand

(Please note that the above is not the exact order in which we did our work, we originally sanded the bucks individually, before noticing it would be better to screw them together and sand them together to produce bucks that more closely resembled each other).

Step 4, Marking guide lines

To help line the buck into the centre of the aluminium, we will need to add some guidelines.

Measure and find the middle of the width of the buck and mark – repeat to the other side. Find the middle of the length of the buck and mark – repeat to other side. Using a square, complete the line along the buck so that they are clearly visible.

Marking guide lines with the square

Taking your two pieces of aluminium, mark the middle of the width and the middle of the length.

Taking your set of bucks, place them on top of the aluminium and align the centre lines so that the middle of the buck set lines up with the middle of the aluminium.

Now, been careful to ensure that the guidelines remain aligned, carefelly mark the perimeter lines of the buck. Remove the buck set, and with a ruler and marker complete the perimeter guidelines.

Aligning guide lines

Step 5, Marking & Trimming the rounded corners

Using either the template used in step 1, or the cutouts from the template, mark out the curved corners. The aim is to remove as much unnecessary aluminium from the corners as possible, as this will make the shrinking process more manageable in the latter steps.

Marking the rounded corners

Using aviation snips or levered snips trim your curves to size.

Snipping the rounded corners

Tidy up the corners by sandwiching the aluminium between two scraps of timber (to give the aluminium rigidity) and file down the curve.

File down to a tidy curve

Step 6, Separating the bucks

Un-screw the bucks from each other.

Step 7, Mounting

In order to minimise the chance of the buck moving around, add a few small pieces of double sided tape along the buck. Caution: Be sure to align your guide lines before pressing the buck into the aluminium as it may be difficult to try and correct any miss alignments.

Apply double-sided tape

Align guide lines

Step 8, Bending & Shrinking

Sandwich your aluminium between two bucks, and tightly grip into the vice. The second buck will not only minimise the amount of scratching your aluminium endures, but it will also help the aluminium fold in the direction you intend, and not up and away.

Taking the plastic mallet, gently and carefully begin moulding your aluminium along the straight edge. When you get to the rounder corners, try and strike down and long, as if you were pushing and guiding the aluminium down the edge of the buck. Be sure to avoid folding the aluminium over, as this will be difficult to hammer out.

Remember the old adage ‘slow and steady wins the race’.

Work your way around the entire buck until you return to where you started.

Step 9, Filing

You will notice that the length of your aluminium at the corners is longer than the rest of the aluminium along the edges. To shorten these, use the file and file down.

File down the oversides corners

Re-work the edges and corners ensuring that the aluminium tightly hugs the buck.

Step 10, Removing the buck

If you find that the aluminium tightly holds the buck to the point that it is difficult to remove, you can use a forstner bit in the corners of the buck to remove enough buck to make it loose.

Fit the forstner bit into the drill press, and set the bit to drop to just above the height of the aluminium.

Set the bit top drll to the right depth with a piece of aluminium

Before powering the drill, align the forstner bit with the corner of buck – aiming to get as close to the edge as possible, obviously be sure to avoid your aluminium.

Align the bit as closely as possible to the edges

Once aligned, power the drill and remove each corner. This should remove the parts of the buck most tightly held by the aluminium. Pull out the buck.

Step 11, Sand & file back

Now that the buck is out, you will be able to get the corners down to the same width as the edges either side. Use a file.

File corners until they meet the width of the edges either side

Check to see that the long edges are the same width as the short edges. If there is any disparity, use the file to bring them to the same width. Conversley, you can used sand paper on a block to sand the edges down to the same width.