Traditional Building Materials - Table of Contents ................. Illustrated Architecture Dictionary

Sheet Metal

Thin sheets of metal that range from 0.006 inch to 0.249 inch thick

Foil or leaf: extremely thin thicknesses

Plate: pieces thicker than 6 mm (0.25 in)

Sheet metal
Excerpts from Wikipedia

Sheet metal is simply metal formed into thin and flat pieces.

It is one of the fundamental forms used in metalworking, and can be cut and bent into a variety of different shapes.


Sheet metal is available as flat pieces or as a coiled strip. The coils are formed by running a continuous sheet of metal through a roll slitter. The thickness of the sheet metal is called its gauge. The gauge of sheet metal ranges from 30 gauge to about 8 gauge. The higher the gauge, the thinner the metal is.

There are many different metals that can be made into sheet metal, such as: aluminum, brass, copper, steel, tin, nickel and titanium.

For decorative uses, important sheet metals include silver, gold, and platinum.
Sheet metal has applications in roofs for building.

Historically, an important use of sheet metal was in plate armor worn by cavalry.

Examples from Buffalo architecture:

Other examples:

See also:


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