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Sheet Metal Info Charts

M.B. Naegle

Diamond
Joined
Feb 7, 2011
Location
Conroe, TX USA
Does anyone know of a good chart available for sale with gauge-to-inches conversions on it, or other helpful tinsmith information?

We have several of the hand-held gauges around the place, and the conversion info can be found in books or online, but it would be handy to have a hard sign or card to attach to the sheer or hang on the wall beside it. There are times where we're not trying to identify a mystery piece of metal (via the hand held gauge), but rather trying to engineer-on-the-fly figuring out what gauge of metal to use as a shim, or something like that. We build our own machine guards and the like frequently, but not often enough to memorize the values.:dunce: And tinsmithing doesn't seem to be a common skill among fabricators or machinists these days, unless you work on hot rods.

Might make my own, but would rather do something cleaner than a sheet of copy paper laminated in packing tape.

eBay has this one, though I think it odd they leave off values for carbon steel as I'd assume that would be the most common?
eBay chart
And Ryerson has these charts online that I might contact them to see if they have them in print/promo form. I'd imagine their specific values are going to be specific to their materials and might be different from another steel mills.
Ryerson chart
 
Gauge is gauge. Galvanized or painted is different thickness, bare metal at n gauge is n gauge thick. Nominal, the Ryerson chart gives the tolerances- if you are really picky.
 
90% of those gauge wheels in the US don't match the sizes of the local metal suppliers. Welders fresh out of college always buy those, and I always have to tell them they are complete junk.
Off the top of my head, these are the sizes we get. Also, aluminum doesn't generally come in gauge sizes. Gauge is based on weight, so it varies by material.

For cold or hot roll 1011, 1018, or A36:

20ga - 0.035
18ga - 0.047
16ga - 0.059
14ga - 0.075
12ga - 0.105
10ga - 0.135
3/16" - 0.188 (often called 7 gauge, but you usually don't actually get 7 gauge)
1/4" -0.250

and so on with the fractional sizes.
 
Gauge is gauge. Galvanized or painted is different thickness, bare metal at n gauge is n gauge thick. Nominal, the Ryerson chart gives the tolerances- if you are really picky.
That's what I thought. I just find it odd that the chart above has differing values for stainless. It almost looks like they took some companies advertisment chart (IOW, we sell these materials in these gauges) and sell it as a general chart, which is really what I'm after in print form. Tolerance would be helpful even if it's very general, as if we are picky we would mike the specific piece in question, but a chart would be handy to know which sheet to grab.

Something like the decimal equivalents charts, but with gauges instead of fractions and tap-drill info.
 
Oh, that ebay one actually looks pretty good. Stainless and mild steel are the same.
And I like that they include ounces for copper.
 
Gauge is gauge. Galvanized or painted is different thickness, bare metal at n gauge is n gauge thick. Nominal, the Ryerson chart gives the tolerances- if you are really picky.
I do think there is a discrepancy with thin galvanized metal where some sell it as a particular gauge that is then galvanized, and some sell it as what gauge it comes out to after galvanizing.
 
Historically, gauge is not gauge, unfortunately, and not just due to surface coatings like galvanizing. There were a bunch of different mill-/maker-specific gauges that got associated with different metals. Here is a web page that lists five current sheet metal gauges for different metals, although the values given for US Standard Gauge and Stainless Gauge are the same. Here's another that lists five sheet metal gauges, and this time the stainless sheet thickness are different! And of course wire gauges (different for different metals!) don't match sheet gauges.
Today things are much more standardized, but I always recommend people specify sheet thickness (inch or mm) rather than gauge, to avoid any question.
 








 
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