Sheet metal is often stored in large wound coils and processed through such manufacturing stages as cleaning, coating, and slitting in a finishing plant or thickness reduction in a rolling mill. During winding and unwinding operations, as well as during storage and transportation, a coil can be supported in a variety of methods. The coil can be formed on a relatively compliant fiber core, or it can be mounted with the core onto a drive shaft or a pair of core chucks. The stresses within the coil develop in response to the sheet metal's material properties, the process tension, and the type of support condition that is present along the coil's inner diameter. In this investigation, a two-dimensional finite element model is applied to capture the stress distribution within sheet metal coils. The influence of support condition on the state of stress is investigated for sheet metal on a core alone, and for the cases in which the coil is supported by a drive shaft or core chucks during winding. The radial and width-wise variations of the stress components are calculated and compared in the light of the differences in compliance between the three means of support.