Mallets and sandbags help you rough in the shape of your part. They're indispensable!

Hammers and dollies are used for both stretching and shrinking metal and a small selection are essential to add to your kit to start metalshaping.

Tucking forks help you create accurately located shrinks along an edge.

Fortunately, you can fabricate a tucking fork very simply with a couple of punches or some round bar steel.

I'll show you how!

A wooden dish-shape is commonly used to form tucks for shrinking (in combination with or as an alternative to tucking forks).

The purists will find a large diameter log and carve in a bowl. However, you can replicate something similar with a chuck of timber and some basic wood working tools. Check it out!

Wooden slapping hammers can help you move metal less aggressively than using a steel hammer. But don't buy one! I'll show you how I fabricated a couple with basic woodworking skills!

If you prefer working with aluminium, some commonly available alloys will work harden with continually hammering. Continuing to hammer will lead to cracking.

To soften the metal for additional shaping requires a process called annealing. This can be done with a torch. Let me show you how.

Shopping and equipment lists!