Yes it is! And in this case at least, I didn't even realize how easy it was going to be. I was planning on buying some light gauge steel off a coil at a local metal roofing company. Then I was going to lay it out and cut it, either with tin snips, or an angle grinder with a wafer disk. At best, I was hoping that he would have the ability to roll or break the edge for me to stiffen things up. Instead, I helped him grab a sheet of his metal, lay out the tail, sheer it to size, and feed it through the lock-form machine. I'll post pictures one of these days of the end product. The machine is really for forming corners of metal ductwork. It bends the edge of the sheet into a Z so that the corner is triple-thick. To make your corner you break a short 90 degree leg in your next side of duct and tuck it into that Z and then bend a leg of the Z over to capture the part you inserted. That probably makes no sense without a picture. So after a quick google search, it turns out the lock form joint we rolled was a "Pittsburgh Lock". So the edge of my new tail is shaped like figure B. That figure is a little exaggerated, my gaps are pretty tight. Anyway, it gives me a thicker, stronger edge than the original bead-rolled edge, and boy was it fast! Each side didn't take more than 2-3 seconds. Feed it in one side and it pops out the other side folded over. We had considered cross-breaking the tail. Putting it in the break and kissing it just enough to put a crease in it corner to corner. But the edges had things stiff enough that we decided it wasn't needed. It certainly opened my eyes to some possibilities. On this project for sure, but just in general. Sheet metal fabrication is one of those things I've never done anything with. More tools I never knew I wanted.
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