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bending square tubing


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New to the heat of things so to speak but love dreaming. I want to make a propane forge so i can bend 1 1/2 square tubing 1/16 thickness. One length 4 foot long another 54 inches long .one bend will be 90 degrees and 45 degrees turned to the inside. I m kind of a dumb hillbilly in the hills of ky and near 80 years old and need the brains of youth. Im attempting to build a round patio table to sell to the public .thanks from a x marine from the 50's

:D

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Bends like that are often done cold with special forms. (or rolled to get circles.)  Can you go into more detail of why you want to do it hot?  Bending tubing hot is very prone to kinking or collapsing it and so may require special forms as well to bend on/with and then also have the extra difficulty of working with hot metal.

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Welcome aboard Bernie, glad to have you. If you'll put your general location in the header you might be surprised how many of the Iforge gang live within visiting distance. Heck one might even have a set of rolls with square dies.

What are the radius of the bends you want to make? If it's close, say 1" or less it's a cut and weld operation but it it's long sat a 24" radius it can be done over a form by slipping a cable through the tubing and winching it over the form. Anchor the form of course.

Do it cold, heating it is nothing but headaches leading to failures. And NO don't fill it with sand, that only works with round tubing. Also drawing it with cable works best with round pipe but is reasonably effective bending a large radius in sq.

Frosty The Lucky.

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Greetings Bernieb,

Bending thin wall tubing 90 or 45 degrees cold or hot will for sure add to your scrap pile.. I would suggest notching grind bevel and weld the three sides with  a MIG welder... The welds will clean up and the outside corners will have a smooth radius. Just this ol boys 2c who has been there before. Good luck with your project. 

Forge on and make beautiful things 

Jim

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bernieb

If you've never tried before, you might be surprised at how easy it is to bend solid stock that's been heated in a forge. 

If you're anything like me, you'll make something "square" by bending then wonder why the better smiths have square corners on their work. 

The technique used to bulk up those corners is called upsetting, which only seems like a weird term until you've given it a try. Then it becomes fairly obvious why blacksmiths would call it "upsetting". It's a whole lot more work to thicken something up, than it is to thin something down.

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