The Chopper Compendium

When the economy tanked I ended up having to sell my three tubing benders but since things are looking up again I wanted to strat a new project and needed a new bender. This time around I wanted to build a different style bender and thanks to Maz I hooked up with Frank at Got-Trikes and ordered the plans for the 'vertical' style bender he designed. This is a really nice affordable bender design for sure but never being completely satisfied I made a tour of several fab shops in my area and looked a bunch of benders including the new Pro-Tools vertical benders and some of the new JD2 machines.
After seeing the bends coming off of several different benders I'm still of the opinion that JD2 makes the most precise die-sets, at least based upon what I saw on my trip. Pro-Tools has some good ideas but the quality coming out of their benders wasn't nearly as good as what I saw coming out of the JD2 machines. Unfortunately the plans that Frank sells are based upon the Pro-Tools model 105 dies sets. To make a long story short what I wanted to do with this new bender design was to incorporate Franks basic design concept adapted to use the JD2 dies. This isn't as simple as it first sounds and I made a ton of mistakes building the prototypes of what I wanted to do. I have new dies coming from JD2 and I'll be posting plans as this projects starts coming together but I envision it as the old 'Bend-0-Matic' on steroids that is still low-bucks but high-tech.
I do like building stuff but there comes a point where it might actually be cheaper just to buy something already made and this project might end up costing more more than a store bought unit but at least I made it myself and I learned a ton of stuff about benders in general so I'm pretty happy so far.
More to follow.

we apreciate the effort!

Things are looking better?

I should have said that they're looking a lot better for bike builders. Everybody else is still sliding down the tubes. I'm seeing a big upturn in small shop business and a huge upswing in interest from the garage based builders. I imagine that some of the boutique builders are still slow but that's only because of the prices they charge.

I'm really pleased to hear your progress with the Gottrikes style bender Gary, I modified mine to my own design just as many more experienced garage builders do. I have also noticed here that there is an upsurge in garage building as folks discover they can access the tools and equipment they need to do the job properly. I also agree on the JD2 versus Pro-Tools dies comments, but JD2 stuff is much harder to get in the UK and also I tend to do mostly Diamond tube bending for which I made my own dies so I guess I'm happy with my set-up.

For those who still don't know what we are talking about or who maybe don't appreciate the versatility of this style of bender, here's anothr pic of me using mine to bend square section steel tube on the Diamond in the hall of my house - note that the bender does not need to be fixed down in any way as all the forces are contained within the stucture of the bender itself.... Setting up to do the second return bend on my FZ750 top frame rails.....

Maz xx

Maz wrote: note that the bender does not need to be fixed down in any way as all the forces are contained within the stucture of the bender itself....

Maz xx

That is one of the best features. And you can bend up a frame in a small area.

EDIT...

I have a few pr. of leather "cowpoke" roper gloves made of nice chinese leather. Would you like a few? PM me your mailing address and they are yours.

hansgoudzwaard wrote:

Maz wrote: note that the bender does not need to be fixed down in any way as all the forces are contained within the stucture of the bender itself....

Maz xx

That is one of the best features. And you can bend up a frame in a small area.

EDIT...

I have a few pr. of leather "cowpoke" roper gloves made of nice chinese leather. Would you like a few? PM me your mailing address and they are yours.

hey that would be nice - pm sent

Maz xx

Maz wrote:I'm really pleased to hear your progress with the Gottrikes style bender Gary, I modified mine to my own design just as many more experienced garage builders do. I have also noticed here that there is an upsurge in garage building as folks discover they can access the tools and equipment they need to do the job properly. I also agree on the JD2 versus Pro-Tools dies comments, but JD2 stuff is much harder to get in the UK and also I tend to do mostly Diamond tube bending for which I made my own dies so I guess I'm happy with my set-up.

For those who still don't know what we are talking about or who maybe don't appreciate the versatility of this style of bender, here's anothr pic of me using mine to bend square section steel tube on the Diamond in the hall of my house - note that the bender does not need to be fixed down in any way as all the forces are contained within the stucture of the bender itself....

Frame bending001.jpg

Setting up to do the second return bend on my FZ750 top frame rails.....

Maz xx

hey Maz how's it going? i like the way you set up your bender. nice job!

Thanks Tim, I'm really busy working on my FZ750 project at the moment plus I've been doing a lot of machining and fabricating for some local guys - and of course trying to meet my committments to writing articles for Gary's new magazine......never a dull moment

I hope to post a lot more soon, once I've caught up with everything

Maz xx

cool!