DIY: Magnetic Board

So today I've been working hard mostly just to stay awake because I was up at 4:30 this morning to get my oldest daughter ready and down to the school for a trip with the Jr. Beta club to Louisville for their state conference. I decided to tackle the magnetic board I was saying I was going to make for the kids.

So I grabbed some metal sheeting we had left over from when we had all our ducting changed out for it to stop animals from messing things up under the house.
I had some spray adhesive from when I tried to fix the roof liner in my van.
I also bought some magnets though I haven't gotten a decoration I like for those yet so I'll be doing that quick project later.

The last of my foam board (I'll have to buy more). I'm really enjoying the sturdiness of foam board and the ease of cutting it compared to using something like plywood.

First I cut my foam board to fit my frame snugly.

I put a line of where I need to cut my metal though my line is far from straight because being silly I drew it off of the foam board itself.

Now here is where things get interesting. Believe it or not power tools scare me including dremels! This means I like to do things by hand! I had seen online where you could just score the metal with a precision knife and then bend it back and forth and it would snap. It looked easy enough though it was far from that easy! First my precision knife slipped out of the line I was trying to make and thinking faster might be better I ended up making all sorts of lines none of which were in the same place! I tried to bend the metal to see if the small score I had made would work but of course it didn't. I made the score mark a little deeper and tried again and I could tell where I had really cut was allowing for more bend but it just wasn't going well! So then I got the hacksaw! After 30 minutes and my hand and wrist getting very sore and I was only an 1/8th of the way through I decided to go back to the precision knife. I took it slow and worked it back and forth in small sections over and over and over again  and then I used the board (see the white thing off to the side) and put it along the line and started to bend the metal. Then I took my big hammer and pounded the darn thing flat in half. I unbent it at this point and (oh score marks are to the outside of the bend) and made a score mark and worked it back and forth a little and then using my hammer pounded the whole thing flat again so I could flip it over, bend it against the wood and then pound it out flat with the hammer. There was a bit more to it then this but I'd have to write a book on this frustration! Eventually it did cause the metal sheeting to snap apart and I do think time wise it was more efficient than using the hacksaw.

Now as you can see in this picture (other than my stove is dirty! I've been doing projects not chores! I've got some major catch up to do) my metal did not fit the frame because I was using scraps so I had to take my left over scrap and cut another piece to fit in there with the first.

I did do it as you can see.

Now I used my low heat glue gun because I didn't have any high heat glue to tell the truth. From the reading I was doing a high heat gun would work best. I found out that by time I got such a large portion of just the outside with some glue on it that it started to dry before I could even fit the metal!
Later I found out that the adhesive spray actually does a pretty good job and I just dotted around the outside with hot glue.

I refit everything into my frame to make sure there was no additional trimming that needed to be done. Thank goodness there wasn't otherwise this could have been an even bigger headache.

Using adhesive spray I coated the metal and then placed my fabric over top of it. I smoothed it out start from the center and going to the outsides.

Back to my handy dandy glue gun. Using the glue gun I put a line around the edge of the fabric and attached it to the foam board. Again, I love low heat because I had so much glue on me it wasn't funny when trying to make sure the fabric was pulled tight.

And there you go my magnetic board. I'm going to make some fun magnets for the girls to use on it but for right now I just grabbed one off the fridge.

I believe my next board will be a cork board for them but first I need to get a couple more supplies.

Hope this gives people some good ideas maybe there is a few items floating around your house that can be used to make something new and useful.

(Note: I do plan to get some sort of way like a thin strip of wood to attach to the inside back of the frame to make sure they don't by accident push the board out though it's pretty tightly in there I just want to make sure.)