Bending brass a little

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spike7638

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I've got a piece of brass half-oval, 5/8 wide, about 12" long. It's like the stuff shown here:

https://www.jamestowndistributors.c...22&familyName=Solid+Back+Brass+Half+Oval+Trim

I need to bend it so that (as seen from above), it's got a slight arc -- about 1/4" over the 12" length of the material. To be clear: it should still lie flat on a table (when the flat side is down!), and the bend should be in the plane of the table.

The bend doesn't have to be a perfect circle-arc, but it shouldn't be just a single kink, either. ;)

Any suggestions? Heat? Use a press somehow? (I have a feeling it'll want to bend in some other plane!)

--John
 
Stick a piece of wood in your vice, carve a groove in the timber roughly, ( but a close fit all the same) to the profile of the brass, full depth.
Grabs your HFB, insert into the groove, whilst apply slight pressure either end, draw the brass through. Take him easy, it will bend very easily.
Now, what ya building???
 
I would take some MDF, draw the arc you want and cut it in half at that line on a bandsaw. Trap the piece between them and use clamps to pull the two halved together. The arc should be slightly tighter when drawn to allow for springback.
 
Mark Needham said:
Stick a piece of wood in your vice, carve a groove in the timber roughly, ( but a close fit all the same) to the profile of the brass, full depth.
Grabs your HFB, insert into the groove, whilst apply slight pressure either end, draw the brass through. Take him easy, it will bend very easily.
Now, what ya building???
Click to expand...

I've got a boat with a teak railing at the stern. When I'm towing a dinghy, the line from the dinghy comes over that rail, through a chock, and up to a cleat. It happens to wear on the back edge of the rail, wearing off the varnish, so I've put a piece of half-round there. Unfortunately, there's JUST enough curvature in the rail that the painter still rubs on it...so I need to bend the half-round to match the curvature of the back edge of the railing.

I'm not sure what HFB means, and a Google Search led to many unlikely answers ("Handsome French Bloke"???), but perhaps it means "half-flat brass."

As for "it'll bend easily", I kind of doubt it...but I'll give it a shot. The stuff seems AWFUL stiff in the hard-to-bend direction (which is the one in which I want to bend it, of course).
 
mikey said:
I would take some MDF, draw the arc you want and cut it in half at that line on a bandsaw. Trap the piece between them and use clamps to pull the two halved together. The arc should be slightly tighter when drawn to allow for springback.
Click to expand...
I think I follow what you're suggesting, but I worry that as I pull them together, the MDF pieces will twist out of plane...I'll try to figure out some way to hold it down flat on the table as I snug up the clamps. Thanks!
 
Just lay some 2x4's with the edges touching the MDF. Clamp the ends of the 2x4's so they apply a little pressure and it will hold the MDF down well. I've done this kind of bending before and this worked well for me.
 
HFB, sorry. Hunk of Farqen Brass, wood is a HFW, Rubber is HFR. Yeah I know, I'm a sad case.
Yes, the brass sounds like it is in a hard state. All the same, it will bend reasonably easy. Funny you being a sailor. I was in The RAN, 12 years, and never went sailing once. Still haven't been.
Smooth waters, mate.
 
You folks are the best! If everything goes wrong, I can always get a bit of new stock from Jamestown and try again. I should have asked this question 12 years or so ago, when I first made these. (In the meantime, I've been doing extra varnishing every year. :( )
 
Not kidding at all...putting a couple of coats of varnish on a few square inches of teak is such a tiny fraction of each year's prep work that it's something I've barely noticed. I mostly want to do the bends for aesthetic reasons. :)
 
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