Rod Bender, Cheap n' Cheerful

[PJs]

I had been bouncing around for a while on how I could bend "smoothly" some 3/8" O1 tool steel. Marv had a great Beefy Bender idea and This Old Tony recently did a great YT video on his. Unfortunately I didn't have the right materials on hand to tackle the task. C-Bag however threw some ideas my way that he uses, that I could make with things on hand fairly quickly. Thanks to you all for the Ideas! The best of the best here on HMT!!

Basically this is an old HFT drill press vice I spent way too long, cleaning up, flattening the base, trying to square the jaws, and minimize tilt. Better than horrid but Cheap and Cheerful and didn't really care if I dinged it up since I got my Rohm 3 way a while back.

I cut up 2 pieces of 1/8" X 1-1/2" X 6" angle iron I had. Layed out the notch and tongue and cut them with the saws all and a hacksaw. The trickier part was to keep the center of the rod as low as I could to the jaws so I clamped the removed jaws to the angle and used a transfer punch to locate the holes and drilled them to match the vice, then bolted through the angle and jaws to get them as low as I could (see pic).

Next required a trip to the hardware store because the screen rollers I had in the bin were too small and didn't have a piece of 1-1/8" anything (or larger) which was close to what I needed in radius for the bends. Luckily have a Great Ace down the road, that has a good scrap bin and pretty much anything a guy like me needs. Found the piece of stainless (a weld on pipe cap) in the scrap bins and some big screen rollers all for <$10. (good deal on the Stainless).

Laid them out and ended up cutting slots for the screen rollers so I could move them in and out or individually if I needed to. With no mill I just layed out the slots and drilled a bunch of holes, Dremel'ed and clean everything up with a file. Chucked up the stainless and brought it down to 1.15" OD which is what I actually needed, center drilled it clearance for a 1/4-20 and off I went. The only other things needed were the 1/4-20 button head cap screws, nuts, and 4-8mm X 12mm X .1 SHCS for the jaws which I had on hand.

Here are the results.




Note: the screen rollers are specified 1/4" but when I measured the radius they were closer to 5/16" which didn't end up marring the surface too badly.

I tried to bend the O1 with out heat but the vice started to get a hernia and afraid I'd strip the screw, so I backed off and heated it then made the bends a bit at a time until I got what I wanted.

I've posted this separately because it worked out so well on this heavy lift, but for smaller round bar or rod this thing will do a lot I believe. I have a set of bushing drivers that can be mounted on it with an insert and believe this setup can pretty much handle any size under 3/8" and can be shaped anyway you want including 3 Axis. Especially with the tongue and notch feature.

You'll get to see what I did with it in another post I'll link in shortly. A fun quick build in my Modus Operandi of Cheap n' Cheerful. Hope it helps others.

~PJ