Thread: Corrugated iron - how would you flatten it?

its easy run over it with the wheels of a big fork lift. works a charm

car and road surface works well

from my experience with new sheet of iron that have been damaged/flattened,run over is that they tend to curl.

I havent seen one that lays flat,although I try not to damage them very often.

I would of thought using a press could possably work but you would need to do it in one
operation,this would require a machine with a large bolster,and around 250 ton/sq" at a minimum.

You would still probably have to put it through a straightener.

If you put it through rollers it would need to go through a straightener.

Is there a time frame on what you want to do,if not you might be better off finacialy using the thinest M/S plate you can find and treating it so that it rusts quickly.

Originally Posted by pipeclay

from my experience with new sheet of iron that have been damaged/flattened,run over is that they tend to curl.

I havent seen one that lays flat,although I try not to damage them very often.

I would of thought using a press could possably work but you would need to do it in one
operation,this would require a machine with a large bolster,and around 250 ton/sq" at a minimum.

You would still probably have to put it through a straightener.

If you put it through rollers it would need to go through a straightener.

Is there a time frame on what you want to do,if not you might be better off finacialy using the thinest M/S plate you can find and treating it so that it rusts quickly.

Pipe clay has pretty well covered it all.

Dave

Find some roadworks, and sling the steamroller driver a slab... you can guess the rest....

Regards
Ray

I had thought of maybe using a roller for a cricket pitch or tennis court. Putting the corrugated iron on a road or large patch of concrete and then running the roller over it. I guess I'll have to give it a try...

Thanks for the thoughts folks. If anyone comes up with a better idea, please shout.

It would need to be very old corrugated because if it is newer stuff it would be Hi-tensiile and would tend to split or would need to be Custom Blue Orb.

If you don't care about rust, what about stacking the sheets interspersed by timber slats under a pile of dry timber and setting fire to it. This will anneal the steel and make it much easier to flatten. It will also melt and burn off some of the zinc -which is why it's best not to stack them on top of one another.

When I was kid we used to get old sheets of corrugated iron from the dump, take them home and flatten them out with Dads' hammer in the back yard.
We'd pinch some tar from the local council road maintanance stock pile to patch up the nail holes, and made tin canoes out of them.
We used bits of newspaper to cover the tar so it wouldn't stick to us.

Used to really wind the neighbours up as it took a couple of hours bashing and made a hell of a racket