My CBH Bender Build

[drivermark]

Seems to be the trend that the newbies here build a bender, so here is my attempt so far.

Was able to score 1/2"x2" material at the local scrap yard for $.50lb so I picked up enough for a couple of benders, so I'm actually building 2 at once.

After cutting pieces to length I clamped the pairs of frames. drive links,etc. together and tack welded them at the corners before marking and drilling the holes

Then I marked what pieces were what and what sizes the holes were supposed to be so I wouldn't have a big ol' brain fart and drill them wrong. (ever happen to you? It does to me all the time )

As you can see I even mis-marked a couple of pieces and had to scratch that out and re-do them

Just a few of the high tech measuring and marking gizmos at my disposal

A little lubrication for drilling the holes




And a few shots of what I've got so far. The bolts are just run of the mill hardware store stock. I need to go back to the scrap yard and see if I can scrounge up some tubing for the spacers, and so far the plan is to try and build the former and follower dies from wood sandwiched between some steel plate. I have some oak that I can shape on my wood lathe (don't have a metal lathe and can't afford to buy the dies at this time) so I'm going to give that a shot. We'll see how it turns out, I'll update as things progress.

[drivermark]

Not sure exactly what I did wrong but it seems that only about 1/2 of each pc is showing.

[hansgoudzwaard]

Looks good so far.

[drivermark]

A bit of an update, first of all I really suck at documenting stuff so there's that.
As far as the wooden die body idea, every time I tried machining that on my wood lathe my lathe gouges would snag up on the end grain and would pretty much just disintegrate the piece I was working on, so I contacted one of my neighbors that does mechanic and machine work for a living to see if he could cut a die blank for me. ( basically the 9in. circle with the groove around the edge) as he has a pretty well equipped machine shop in his garage. He said he could do it if I brought him the material, so after another visit to the scrap yard I came home with a 10"x10"x2" piece of mild steel. Since he said it would be easier to cut if it was as close to round as I could get it, I took the vice/material clamp gizmo off of my little horizontal bandsaw and spent the next 2 1/2 days knocking the corners off of that hunk of steel. A bit of a job for a saw that is rated for 6" stock max.
Anyway I got the die started and got the ratchet arm notches cut out (I'll post some pics of that when I get the radius cut on the end and patch up a mistake I made on it)
Totally off topic, I just got to say that I have been spending a bit of time going through old posts in all sections of this forum and have learned a bunch from the members here and would like to say thank you for all of the knowledge shared here, it is a great place to learn about building bikes and to see the excellent work that others have done, and if anyone has any input on this project I'm working on now, please feel free to share, any advice is very much appreciated.
Thanks
Mark

[drivermark]

Time for an update, progress has been slow because I can't do a whole lot at once since I got crashed into last winter. Anyway here's where I'm at so far.
This is the mistake I made that I mentioned earlier

The only hole that I didn't anal retentively lay out before I drilled. The fix was to cut out a slug with a larger hole saw.


I then ground a good deep bevel on both the slug and the "ratchet" arm and gave it about 4 good tacks on each side before welding it up solid, then I ground and sanded the welds to smooth them all out and cut out the material that I didn't want there, what I'm going for is to make the "ratchet" arm look like the one in the drawing as opposed to the pictures of the one in Gary's article , I still need to finish sand it but here's what I got so far.

Remember I said I was building 2 of these, well that gave me the "opportunity" to screw up 2 of them which gives an example of how I fixed it.

Here is the chunk of steel I bought to make a die out of,(that started out as a 10 in.+/- square) my neighbor thought he could turn it on his lathe but as it turns out his machine is too small so I'm going to take it up to the local community college to see if someone in a machine shop class can turn it for me, then the plan will be to bore the holes on my drill press and chain drill it to remove the pie shaped piece then weld the little tube holder arm onto the die.
Once again if anybody has any suggestions or comments, feel free

[drivermark]

I've now almost got a bender, I finally hooked up with some one who could turn that big hunk of steel so it was round and had a groove in the edge. I already had the drive pin holes marked and center punched and the lines to cut the big wedge shape out of it, so when I got it back form the guy with the lathe, I drilled the pivot pin holes and a row of 1/4 inch holes along side the cut line and then hacked it out with my sawsall. The next step was to grind and sand it smooth. After that came the little arm that the tubing attaches to, I got that all nice and square and straight and then welded it to the die.
Then came the handle, just a basic couple of slabs of 3/8 plate and some 1 inch square bar that I had laying around. For the follower bar I thought I'd try to use the wedge that I removed from the die since it already had the radius cut in it and I had it on hand (I'll let you know how it works out when I actually bend some tube with it). The only thing I got left to do is make the U strap that holds the tube and drill the hole for the pin/bolt that holds the U strap.
Here are some pics of the contraption.
All together with materials and machining I have about $130 and spare time I didn't keep track of into it.

[Customize IT]

the follower dies on my jd are striaght not in a curve.

Will be interesting to see if that will work. without leaving a indent?

The are actually 2 straight pieces on a bar to allow it to bend and form in between them. ?????????

Nice job i bought mine with a bunch of dies used for over a grand but hyd. saved some money there.
Harbor frieght sells the exact hyd cyl and pump unit in you want to make it hyd?

http://www.harborfreight.com/10000-psi- ... 98318.html

Can not find the cyl on the web site but know it is there about 12 in long and makes bending tube very easy.