(Words by Charles Wickam) If you’re following along like every good Bangshifter does, you read the blog and watched the Make It Kustom video about English Wheel basics. Wait, what ?!?! You didn’t? Before we go any further go watch it, by clicking this link… I’ll wait. Okay, you watched it, good, and as you saw, Karl Fishers English Wheel has a fair amount of girth to it, which may not be very practical for the DIY fabricator in a 2 car garage since a device of that size would take up a good amount of space. Plus you also need workspace to move around with the piece of metal you’re working with.
That’s where Eastwood steps in with their new Mini English Wheel, a new tool that’s the brain child of Mark from R&D at Eastwood that helps the do it yourselfer quickly and easily make patch panels for their project. The great thing about this is if you’re a novice like myself and can do the basics this is perfect for making patch panels for rust repair or doing custom mods like shaving your door handles. The size is mind-blowing to me because it can be easily clamped in a vise, and the anvils can be rotated 90 degrees. Say what?!?! And when you’re done it can easily be stored away under the workbench. Another plus is that there are 4 different forming dyes available to get that shape that you need without having to bend the metal over your leg or some cylindrical object that’s laying around. And we know what happens to metal that isn’t perfectly shaped right? Well watch the video and get your learn on cause you’re going to want one just like myself.
Nice idea, but the throat area needs the profile of a ‘C’ and bigger. I could see where you could very easily bust your knuckles on this.