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Still haven't found a way to keep the top edge of the V-block from biting
into that which I'm bending, but it hasn't been critical yet.

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The shop I work at does all sorts of metal fabrication and we run several press brakes. To keep the part from biting into your V-Block, you need to break the sharp corner. All of our lower forms on our press brake tools have radii on the upper corners to allow the material to slide, the deeper the draw the larger the radius. We actually grind a radius on the forms on a surface grinder, breaking it by hand doesn't produce a large enough radius fast enough for us. Typically 1/32 minimum.