Author Topic: How I make boats/trays out of aluminum flashing instead of using aluminum foil  (Read 2324 times)

Lonzinomaker

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This is a brief "How I did it" for making the tray/boats from flashing instead of using aluminum foil.
I hope it is not to hard to follow. I didn't want to do a step by step instructable because that would be to long for this forum.
I use aluminum flashing that I buy from Home Depot to make boats/trays instead of using aluminum foil.  The flashing lasts forever, it is stronger and looks nicer than foil. The flashing can be cut with a retractable blade utility knife by scoring heavily and bending, just like sheetrock. Or you can use tin snips, poultry shears or even heavy scissors.  To bend the flashing I use wide bladed vise grips (search Amazon for vise grip sheet metal tool) and a 2X6 as fulcrum to help get a straight bend. I also use a straight edge metal ruler to get straight  lines when scoring and a sharpy for laying out lines. The cut edges on the flashing is very sharp, so I use sandpaper to soften the edges and also fold over and crimp the sides so they are stronger and I won't cut myself when using the trays. Caveat: I am not a tin smith so these are fairly crude, but they are cheap and work very well to keep wood from combusting.  I put the smoke box on the flashing and trace the outline for sizing the trays. I make 2 trays that together will cover about 2/3 of smoke box.  And I make on longer one that covers 1/2 of box for a smoke when I use less wood like when doing jerky.
Pic #1 shows the layout lines. 
#2 shows the first bend and how I push the grips against a board to make the bend straight and tight on line. 
#3 shows the ends bent. 
#4 shows the sides formed and start of corners being joined. 
#5 is a closeup of corner and how I fold over the long end onto short end to crimp and keep the sides at a 90 deg bend.
#6 shows the completed tray. 
The last picture shows a couple of my first attemps that weren't very pretty, but they worked.
« Last Edit: March 25, 2021, 11:15:14 AM by Lonzinomaker »
Dave
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barelfly

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This is why I love this place! Thanks for sharing your plans for this! Love it!
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SeaWolf

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Pic #1 shows the layout lines. 
#2 shows the first bend and how I push the grips against a board to make the bend straight and tight on line. 
#3 shows the ends bent. 
#4 shows the sides formed and start of corners being joined. 
#5 is a closeup of corner and how I fold over the long end onto short end to crimp and keep the sides at a 90 deg bend.
#6 shows the completed tray. 
The last picture shows a couple of my first attemps that weren't very pretty, but they worked.

None of these pictures are working. Can you possibly upload them again? Or put them up on postimage.org for free and use the links from there to show them? Thanks. Your post sounds really helpful.

old sarge

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The forum crashed and Ben, the IT tech for SI has been working on it.  Right now, images will not show up according to Ben. But he is working it. As for me, I cannot access the forum with Safari.  Prior to the crash, I was having slow, intermittant success with Safari and I posted this and seemed to be the only member with the problem. Right now, I am on FireFox and all except images is fine.
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