How to make a tray.

Things you will need:

Aluminium Sheet

Wooden template
Circle template

Hammer

Marker
Disc Sander
Bench Vise

Sand paper (optional)

Polisher (optional)

Instructions:

STEP 1. Firstly laser cut the circle templates. The circle templates will be used to create the curved edges for the wooden template.

STEP 2. Choose a desired circle radius and carefully outline curves on the four corners of the wooden block. There are multiple circle diameters that you can choose to create the curve arc of the tray. We choose for this project the 30mm.

STEP 3. Next, using the disk sander, carefully round of the edges to create a smooth curve on all four corners. You and your partner's template should be of exact shape when faced together.

STEP 4. Lay the wooden template upon the aluminium sheet. Mark a 2 cm offset from the outline of the wooden template onto the aluminium sheet. Using a cutter, carefully cut off the marked edges. If done correctly, you should only be cutting off the corners of the aluminium.

STEP 5. Sandwiching you aluminium sheet between your and your partners wooden template, fixate it securely on to the bench vise. It is better to work the corners of the metal first, thus secure your block so that that it is easy to hammer the corner.

STEP 6. Go around the edges and work your way from the corner out. Re-clamp to another corner and work from corner out, and repeat for all corners. This will make sure that you are shrinking the metal in a consistent way without damaging the softer wooden template too much that will get you an uneven tray.

STEP 7. To get a smoother curve, you can take off the wooden template and use round edges of the bench vise for the details.

Repeat STEPS 6&7 carefully shrinking the metal towards to the wooden template.

STEP 8. If you have rounded edges that have been stretched beyond the width of 2 cm, use a metal filer to file down this edge.