Hi Frank,
I thought I would send you some pictures of the bender I built with your
plans. As you can see, on mine, I mounted swivel casters and I have
extendable levelers. I had to remove the bump from the weld seam on the
inside of the 2” square tubing to get the 1-1/2”square tubing for the
levelers to slide in nicely. This was easily done in a lathe with a
boring bar and tool bit turned sideways. Not sure if that would work with
all square tubing though, because I have seen some with the same wall
thickness, but with much more rounded corners than what I had. The pins
were made from some 1” grade 8 bolts turned down. I made the swingarm
bushings from leaded steel. Anyway, I really enjoyed building it. The
next thing will be to make or buy some bending dies and get a project
going. I have a 4 year old boy, and I would really like to build something
with him. I already bought him a hood and gloves from Harbor Freight and
let him run some weld beads on some scrap steel. (I wish they made welding
gloves that fit his little hands though.) If I decide to make any dies,
I’ll share that too. I’m working on an attachment for my lathe for
cutting the radiuses, but I haven’t got all the details sorted out
yet.
Thanks.
Fred Geitner McDonald, Pa.
