On Thursday, November 8, 2018 at 6:59:54 PM UTC-5, Bob LaFrance wrote:
On Thursday, November 8, 2018 at 10:10:17 AM UTC-5, wrote:
Greetings.

I am making a lamp for my living room. I will use a 45 pound plate for the base and some 1/2" rebar for the lamp itself. Base will be on one wall and light bulb will be about 7' away. I need to bend an 11' piece of rebar into a perfect arc. It would be 180 degrees of a circle. I am thinking to make a fixture out of plywood. Fixture would be similar to what an electrician would use to bend conduit. I don't intend on heating rebar. Just bend on fixture. Other way would be to create a fixture using a complete sheet of plywood. I think that is overkill.

Any thoughts?

thanks
Bob

Thank you Carl. My friend has some of the large spools you mention. I think that may be best way to go. If this prototype works well I will make 18 of them using a 20' length for my driveway. Did your greenhouse produce food for your family?

If you really want to do it yourself, more power to you. If it was me, I'd take the rebar to a fab shop that does pipe and tube bending. They'd put it on a Buffalo or a modern equivalent, and you'd walk out with 18 pieces of nicely bent rebar in less than an hour -- probably much less. The cost probably would be about the same as a couple of sheets of thick plywood you'd use for bending forms, based on shop charges I heard while writing an article about Buffalos, four years ago.

Here's the process I'm talking about:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crt44pJcKLQ

That's a heavy piece of angle, but they change rollers to handle small pipe, tube, and barstock -- including rebar.

--
Ed Huntress