Small Hossfeld style bender

[Frank S]

HO$$, I didn't bother with any drawings or plans. Basically the bender was simply cobbled together designed around my need to make some 3" x 5" letters and some 4.5" x 8" letters using 1/8 by 1/2" flat bar. so to get a 3"x 5" number "0" I needed to make the inside radius 1 inch A 3/4" flat washer just happened to be 2" in diameter and I had some 3" diameter disks that were 3/8" thick Stack 2 of those with the washer in between for the die to form those letters.
For the larger letters I searched through my pile of disks and found one that was 3.5" in diameter and 1/8" thick, then to make the rest of the die I located a pair of 4.5" by 1/4" thick but I still needed another 1/4" to have the same 7/8" stack up as with the smaller die set. so I located a pair of disks that were 1/8" thick just slightly smaller in OD than the 4.5" for the rolling die I found a pair of 1.5" x 3/8" disks and another one 1/8" thick I chucked these disks up in the lathe 1 by 1 and drilled a 3/4" hole through the center. For the pulling block that is simply a head bolt nut from a caterpillar engine I heated it to anneal it soft enough to drill then chucked in in the lathe and drilled out the threads. Trust me from past experiences with these nuts they have to be annealed or you're going to have to re sharpen the drill several times just to drill out the threads they are that hard. Then I turned it down to only 7/8' tall
for the bender bars themselves I stacked all 4 of them and drilled the first hole near one end then centered one of the 3" disks on the hole and centered the 1.5" disk on the bars touching the 3" disk. to drill the 2nd hole then replaced the 3" with a 4.5" and repeated for the next hole just encase I need to make a larger diameter bend later on I stepped over a distance and drilled another hole. For right now the only actual fabrication that was done was to flatten a 18" long 3/4" sch 80 pipe on one end to 7/8" so I could weld it between the swing bars as a handle the frame bars are just clamped to the table with a piece of 1 3/8" thick piece of steel Later I will weld up the frame properly and add a bolting base so I can bolt it to my work table.
This is what I made the bender for

My sister's Grand son is the qtr back on his school's 6 man football team He has 2 state rings now and 1 more year before he graduates I told her that I am making the 2019 numbers and keeping them in my shop until next year so he had better take the team to the championship and win next year.