Yeah, I think warm. It just does not help much. It's still -17degrees outside! Maybe it would help if I used the Fahrenheit scale. Then it's still positive at 1.4degrees.
Not much done with the car. I have been doing some experimenting though. The boot floor is just a huge hole as it is now. And I've been trying to make the beads in a panel to make a new one, but after putting in the beads it looks like a huge Pringles potato chip with beads in it! Some experimenting have given me confidence I can actually do it and end up with something useable.
Take 1 is to shrink down the continuation of the bead afterwards using the OA welder and shrink it down. A well known method, but it's not easy on a flat sheet.
Take 2 is to stretch the bead area (in the English Wheel) before beading. This is a pretty well known method. The bad news is that it's very difficult to know how much to stretch. But in the case of the boot floor the beads are quite large, so it seems it will not easily be stretched too much.
Next month we will have a metalshaping gathering here and I will probably use the opportunity then to do it. I cannot easily handle such a big part in the Ewheel alone, and then there will be someone else with some experience to help. With 2 guys working a sheet in the Ewheel both need to know what to do. It's like synchronizing 2 brains through a big sheet of 0.7mm steel plate.
Then that will probably not be perfect, so it will be a combination of the 2 above.
I also tried out shrinking using just a hollowed out tree stump and a mallet. It looks almost like magic when you see it demonstrated, and it's quite easy to think "I could never do that". Well try it! I did, and if nothing else it's a great morale booster. It always is when you find you can do magic.
I'll see if I can post some photos, but it's not easy holding the camera while banging on a piece of metal. So if you're interested, please try
www.Metalmeet.com/Forum where sheet metal magic is explained. I think I mentioned that before.
I also need to understand how to make a reverse shape in order to make the transitition from the headlight to the nose piece. I think the coin have dropped on that one too. A reverse shape is ... ahh not easy to explain, but a potato chip is a reverse shape. It is neither concave nor convex, but rather both. One guy at Metalmeet explained it as a shape that will not hold water no matter which way you hold it. If you go back a bit and look at the flexible pattern from the front piece I showed you, there is such a shape.
I will try to show you some of this but if you actually want to learn how to, then I already told you where to go.