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Are steel rods necessary? Can the form be made with pieces of wood in place of steel rods?

tommyboy

I have to say that steel won't warp and if you use dowels they often do. Select good sturdy material. You can also use copper pipe

I just made a form using 1/2" OD copper pipe. I cut it using a cheapo tubing cutter. I think I spent about $20 all tolled, including the cutter. I ended up using 3/4" plywood, which is way overkill (1/2" should be adequate), but I didn't have any 1/2", and had lots of 3/4" leftover from bench building stuff...

Any thing that won't warp . Early I tried MDF and found that at about 50 bends it starts to deteriorate. That is why I use plywood .

I just made a dred mold using 1/2" conduit. The outside dia. is a about .705"....try and find a drill that size. I used an 11/16" drill and filed the holes out a bit. Worked fine. Cost....about $2.50 for the pipe, and the 3/4" plywood were the cutouts from the building mold I made.

Kevin

The form I use has a long piece of 6" wide galvanized roofing flashing.

I do the same as Mark. All of my forms are connected with 1/2" dowels and then the form is covered in roof flashing. This allows me to use the heating blanket right on the form, followed by spring steel, wood to be bent, and another spring steel. This greatly diminished the problem of breaking the bent wood as you are removing it from the bender.

Interesting Sylvan, thanks.