.webp)
Sheet metal fabrication is the sequence that turns flat metal sheet into a finished object: cutting, forming, joining and finishing brass, bronze, steel or aluminium into worktops, cladding, furniture and architectural metalwork.
A sheet of brass arrives flat — a thin, mirror-bright plane you could slide under a door, with no hint yet of the form it will hold. By the end of the week it stands on the bench as a crisp three-dimensional object, edges folded square, seams gone, catching the light along a line that did not exist a few days before. That transformation is sheet metal fabrication: turning flat metal sheet into a finished thing — a worktop, a cabinet, a cladding panel, a furniture frame, a piece of architectural metalwork. Most of the visible metal in a luxury interior begins exactly this way: brass, bronze, stainless steel, blackened steel or aluminium, supplied flat and worked into form. The craft lives in the sequence of operations that carries it from sheet to object without surrendering the precision, the flatness or the finish along the way.
Here is how that sequence works, and what each stage quietly decides.
1. Cutting
It begins with the cut. The sheet is brought to its developed shape — the flat pattern that, once folded, resolves into the finished form. Cutting is done by laser, CNC routing, waterjet or guillotine shearing, the choice set by the metal, the thickness and the precision the piece demands. A laser tracks the profile in a thin line of light and leaves an edge that is clean and exact, which is why it is our standard for fine, complex work; the guillotine, by contrast, brings its blade down with a single firm shear and is quicker for long straight cuts in heavier stock. Accuracy here matters more than it looks: every operation that follows is built on this cut, and a fraction of a millimetre lost at the edge compounds quietly through forming and joining until it shows.
2. Forming
Forming is where the flat sheet finds its third dimension. The principal operations are:
- Folding and bending — pressing the sheet along a line to lift a clean, square angle, using a press brake or folder. The fold radius and the exact position of the bend line are calculated in advance to allow for the metal's thickness and its instinct to spring back a degree or two once the pressure lifts.
- Rolling — feeding the sheet through rollers to draw it into a curve or a cylinder, for curved cladding, rolled edges and tubular components.
- Shaping over a former — coaxing the sheet over a mould or buck to raise a compound curve, for pieces that need to bend in more than one direction at once.
Softer metals like brass ask for a gentler hand. The sheet has to be worked without kinking the curve or marking the bright surface, and there is a real tension in it: the metal moves more willingly when warmed, yet too much heat on brass or bronze begins to shift the colour. We have learned to read that line carefully — warm enough to persuade the metal, never enough to touch its tone — which is why, for us, forming and finishing have never been separate concerns but two ends of the same decision.
3. Joining
Separate components are brought together by welding, brazing, riveting or mechanical fixing. Welding is the usual route to a seamless result: MIG welding for the primary structure, where speed and lower heat input earn their place out of sight, and TIG welding wherever a seam will be seen and must later be polished back until the eye cannot find it. Which is which is settled at the drawing stage, by reading the piece and asking where the eye will travel — a decision we set out in full in our note on MIG vs TIG welding. Brass asks the most of a welder, its low melting point leaving little margin for error; we cover that craft in the craft of welding brass.
Where a weld would be the wrong answer — on very thin sheet, or where the pull of heat distortion cannot be risked — components are joined instead by concealed mechanical fixings or by wrapping the metal over a stable core. Brass and bronze worktops are often made this way, the sheet wrapped over moisture-resistant MDF that lends rigidity and holds its dimension while the surface stays solid metal to the touch, as in our Camberwell House commission.
4. Finishing
Finishing is the stage that turns a fabricated object into a surface worth living with. Welds are ground flush and polished out; the whole face is then brought to its specified finish — mirror-polished, satin-brushed, hammered, blackened, patinated or coated. On a piece built from several parts, every surface is taken to the same standard, so the object reads as one continuous piece of metal rather than an assembly of them. The finishes themselves, and how each carries the passing years, are set out under metal finishes; coloured, hard-wearing coatings such as PVD go on as a final stage for surfaces that take constant handling, like the handrails at 77 London.
Tolerances and why they matter
Fine metalwork is held to tolerances measured in fractions of a millimetre, for the simple reason that metal confesses error where most materials hide it. A reflective surface gives away every ripple; a crisp edge betrays every wander from true; a flush join admits every gap of light. So the real discipline of sheet metal fabrication for luxury interiors is less about mastering any single operation than about carrying accuracy intact through all of them — cutting clean, forming without distortion, joining without heat-pull, finishing without ever losing the line.
From sheet to commission
In practice, a fabricated metal piece for an interior travels from approved drawings through cutting, forming, joining and finishing in our London metalwork shop, then out into the wider commission — topped, upholstered, glazed or installed alongside the joinery. The fabrication is one stage of a coordinated whole, and we like it best when nobody can tell where one trade ended and the next began; the metalwork capability in full is set out in our guide to bespoke metalwork.
