Video /
May 31, 2020

[VIDEO] How to Make a Custom Stainless Range Hood

Brushed stainless steel and PVC pipe combine to make a unique design

Using stainless steel and PVC plastic, Chris Zeppieri, founder of fabrication workshop Make Everything, designed his own custom range hood for the kitchen. 

To create a sleek, modern look, Zeppieri used a brushed finish and 16-gauge thick steel.

“We wanted to give the best product that we could, so we went with a little bit heavier of a gauge,” Zeppieri says. “It's a little more expensive, but in the end, it's way more rigid than using anything thinner than that.”

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While creating the range hood, Zeppieri and his team ran into some difficulties while cutting the three pieces needed for the range hood shell due to the width of the steel. However, they were able to use a 48-inch straight brake to make the cuts. 

Watch the video to learn more. 

Transcript: [VIDEO] Making a Custom Range Hood In Stainless Steel

Hey, I’m Chris from Make Everything, and today we are making a custom range hood out of stainless steel. And this is what it looks like right before it goes to get installed. Check it out! 

Ok, so this project started out in Google Sketchup, as a lot of my more involved and technical projects do. I rendered the entire thing in Sketchup. I will have some screenshots available on my website. There'll be a link down below, but the rendering just sort of lets the client know exactly what they're getting, and helps me as my build to plans, lets me know what I need.

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Brushed stainless steel, PVC plastic 

I’m using a number four finished stainless steel. The white that you're seeing is the PVC plastic that comes on it when you buy it, which keeps it protected. Number four fault polish is a brushed finish, so it's it's not mirrored, but it's not a raw finish. Definitely has some striated lines, and we'll use those and cheer it up. Here on the big 50-52-inch shear at a match shop. Now we're using 16-gauge-thick material, and it's a little heavy for this application, but we wanted to give the best product that we could. So we went with a little bit heavier of a gauge. It's a little more expensive, but in the end, it's way more rigid than using anything thinner than that. Once we get the main piece cut on the shear, we just do a bunch of measuring and checking to make sure everything's gonna be nice and square and flat, and then we can cut the other piece. We're gonna wind up with three total pieces for the rangehood shell itself, and then this whole thing is going to get two pot racks as well. Once we have everything cut up we move over to the break. Now this wasn’t ideal to do this. We should have used the press break maybe or a finger break, but for the width of this thing, the only tool that we had access to was this 48 inch straight break, and you're gonna see in a second, the reason that this wasn’t ideal. 

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Perseverance through challenges

We take a lot of time and care into lining everything up and squaring everything, but we're gonna see right here that we can't really accomplish the bend all the way because it's hitting that crossbar, and the tensioning bolt in the center of the machine. So it got a little hairy. We gotta kind of just force through it, and you know, make sure everything looked square and straight. When we were done with a little bit of persuasion everything did come out really nice. And after that was done we were able to go and start doing some of the horizontal rips. And now these would be for the side pieces that are gonna get welded on having a shear like this really just makes things so much easier when you're cutting up something  that is difficult to cut, like stainless. 

See the full transcript here

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