In article , John Flanagan
wrote:

On Wed, 09 Jul 2003 20:28:31 -0700, Ernie Leimkuhler
wrote:

It paid for itself in one $12,000 railing.

Dog gone Ernie how long did it take you to do the whole job for the
one railing? But of more interest how did you manage to get a smooth
bend of such a large radius? Lots and lots of small bends or what?


Rack bending is exactly that.
Lots of small bends.
Before I built my roller is was my only solution.
It isn't really all that hard.
It just takes a good eye for curves.

Take a small stout table.
Bolt it to the ground so it can't move.
Screw wood blocks to the top with curved surfaces.
slide the tube between the blocks while racking the tube to one side
every few inches.
The idea is to have a series of small bends that are close enough
together to fool the eye.
It does take practice, but is extremely cheap to do.

The most critical part is not to allow the tube to rotate, or you end
up with a spiral.
I usually take the length of tube, and nest it into a length of angle
iron, then use the edeg of the angle iron to sharpie marker a line all
the way down the tube.
This way you have a reference line to keep the tube from rotating
accidentally.




John

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