Wire bender box

Ryan Mooney

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Almost didn't post this one, but figured what the heck it's nice to have a little rough and ready work shown every now and then to in addition to all the fancy stuff. Not everything needs to be museum quality :D

Recently bought a little wire bender jig for another project. Cute little unit but it needed to be screwed down to something to be used and came with four little loose posts that I was sure I'd loose as soon as I took my eye off of them. Decided to quickly solve both problems by screwing it to a piece of oak scrap that I can clamp in the vice and making a little trap door box in one end of the oak chunk to store the posts.

Nothing fancy used an old 4 1/2 plane to square the piece up more or less, two chisels (one would have worked, but one smaller one got into the edges easier) to cut the box hollow out and slope the sides where the lid goes (and my pocket knife to clean out the corners). A handsaw to cut the scrap to length (and cut off the slip for the lid) and a small razor saw to make the relief cuts on either side of the "catch" for the lid.

Here's the bender jig
IMG_20150712_173056059.jpg

Box open, the lid rides in a 45d bevel cut into the inside of the box opening.
IMG_20150712_174028849.jpg

Underside of the lid showing the catch. To make that i just cut the lid a bit fat at the one end, then shaved away the unwanted bits with a chisel to get to a consistent thickness except where the bump is. There are razor saw curd on either side of the bump and the relief cut behind it allows it to bend up and pop over the edge of the box (I rounded the lip of the box opening a smidge as well).
IMG_20150712_174052842_HDR.jpg

That's about it, no measuring just done by eyeball, a few simple tools and real quick and functional. Unfinished but I did give it a rub with some canning wax to allow the moving parts to slide easier.

How did the wire bender work you ask? Don't know, it ended up being laughably undersized for the project I intended it for (another risk of buying online sight unseen when you have no idea what you're doing) so I just bent the rod in the vice. :doh: I have it all in one place now anyway if I ever need to bend some small stuff, at least it was cheap :eek:
 
Hah! I've got one of those laying around 'somewhere'. That looks like a nice little box to keep the extra pegs handy.
 
That's a neat handy tool. Have one myself came in real handy.
Love the storage solution, i keep mine in its package. Your storage solution is excellent.
Btw the subject of the quality of museum "quality" came up this past weekend. Your box would have made it in my view.
Would be quiet a laugh if one made one like yours, roughed it up with some dust, aged and chipped the bender parts paintwork and put it on ebay for 5x price as vintage /antique barbed wire bender from a cowboy ranch. Lol.
Good post Ryan.;)

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Btw the subject of the quality of museum "quality" came up this past weekend. Your box would have made it in my view.
Would be quiet a laugh if one made one like yours, roughed it up with some dust, aged and chipped the bender parts paintwork and put it on ebay for 5x price as vintage /antique barbed wire bender from a cowboy ranch. Lol.

Maybe I should re-phrase that, museum quality but not Whitehouse Front Room quality :D

:rofl: I think its a bit light for barbed wire even (the last two trips I've made up to Canada both seemed to involve excessive amounts of serendipitous fencing with the barb wire scars to prove it :crutches:, two is a coincidence but if the next one ends up that way its a pattern and I'm gonna start getting suspicious :hide:).

Maybe I could pitch it as a vintage lamp wire bender for retirement lamps or something :rofl: I don't think I'd have to do a lot of roughing up on the wood part, its plenty rough as it is, just rub a little lamp black and shop grease on it and we'd be good to go (the paint chips would help though I imagine, maybe a few rock dings and some file marks as well.. :rolleyes:).

If I was gonna make phoney antiques around here though the business to be in would be wheels, holy smokes! :eek: They go for big money, I was at an estate auction a few months back and wowser the wheels of any sort were going for a LOT. Most of them you coulda made from scrap steel and left out to rust for a few months (maybe helped along with a salt spray) and I can't see how most of the folks bidding woulda told the difference given the shape they were in. (Stealth gloat I got a really nice little post drill for reasonable money only the advance is busted and I can make that easily enough). The corn shellers went for big bucks as well, way more than new even and weren't in great shape either.
 
I have to agree that it looks like a handy box, have one of those jigs around myself, luckily still in the bag with the pins. Will have to throw together one of those when the shop gets cool enough. :thumb:
 
This begs the question: Is there a decent commercially made wire bender jig?

Good question Ted and I sure don't know the answer.. I think this one would be fine for soft wire (gold, silver, copper, brass) as long as its not to thick. Basically jewellery ought to be ok as long as you don't work it to hard. The bending options on it are moderately incomplete as well, I think you could do some stuff with some shims and hackery to make it work ok for some types of projects.

Something like this: http://grizzly.com/products/Universal-Bender/G7153 apparently works ok up to say 1/4" or maybe a bit more. A bit different: http://grizzly.com/products/Compact-Bender-System-Floor-Model/H3184 perhaps. I vaguely remember something not entirely unlike the G7153 in the metal shop way back in high school but that's long enough ago I don't trust my recollection. If anyone has practical modern experience with any of these I'd be interested to hear it..

Whether any of these is better for most usage than a steel plate with some holes drilled in it and a few hand ground forms and a homemade bending bar is debatable..
 
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