 “Do
It Yourself Vacuum Forming for the Hobbyist” by Douglas E. Walsh
$12.95 USD; available through Workshop Publishing’s
web site.
https://www.build-stuff.com/
135 pages, with many drawings and/or black-and-white photographs..
“It’s easy! Try it!” the cover says. Probably the
best compliment I can give a how-to book like this one is that after reading
the book, I believe that. I’ve already built a dirt-simple, embarrassingly
cheap device using stuff I had laying around -- and I plan to give vacu-forming
a shot. I expect I’ll enjoy it, and will wonder what took me so
long.
I’ve read lots of articles on the subject over the years, in various
magazines. They all generally said it was relatively easy, but managed
to give me the impression that both procedures and the needed machinery
were so arcane, specialized or just plain picky that good results could
only be gained after years of playing around with twenty gazillion variables:
many of which would be very hard to predict or control. The average short
article (or mention within a larger article) made me feel like only a
handful of God-like experts would ever get decent results with vacu-forming:
this despite things like the toy machines once on the market. Though they
often tried to convince me it was easy, and to give the process a shot,
it often came across as being an intimidating chore only a few would ever
truly master. So, I never tried it. I’m sure I’m not the only
one in that boat!?
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This book’s introduction says a lot: “The purpose of this
book is to take a little understood manufacturing process and reduce it
to its simplest form, so it can be done right in the home. It is a mystery
to me why vacuum forming is so largely ignored in the hobby and craft
fields. It is an easy, clean and fast way to make high quality plastic
parts. Best of all, small scale vacuum forming can be done in your own
home, with no special skills and very little equipment”. I got exactly
that impression, from reading this book. The author’s simple writing
style and very good organization of thought helped a lot.
If you’re still not convinced vacu-forming might actually be easy,
pick up Volume #7 in the CultTVman series of DVDs and watch the Vacuforming
section on disc one. My eyes about fell out of my head, the first
time I saw it being done “live and in person,” without any
fancy $$$ equipment. Between that DVD and this book, I’m convinced!
In fact I’m not only anxious to give it a single try, but to add
it to my list of fabrication and/or modification solutions. Down the road,
I’d love to be able to think, “Well, I’ll just vacu-form
that new part. No big deal!”
Highly recommended.
Thanks to my wallet for the review sample.
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