Ski Builders Forum

The site and this forum are great!

I use a $20 tube bender that I modified with a Dremel cutting bit. It’s portable which makes it easy to work along your template so you can have your edges bent prior to having your base material cut out. You can really get accurate and don’t need many clips when tacking the edges onto the base material.

Here is a little how to article with a description of the mod if you’re interested:

…well I guess I can't post a URL yet but if you go the site in my profile and click the "How to Bend Steel Edges for a Snowboard" link you'll see the article and associated pictures.

PM me the url and I'll post it

heres dante's URL for the bender mod..

http://boardcrafter.com/content/view/24/33/

And a very nice, cheap mod to an existing tool for our nefarious ski purposes!

Very funny that we came almost the same solution independently.

I used the same tool but modified it a little differently.
Rather than cutting a groove in one of the "pipe tracks" i used my grinder to put a better square on the surface connected to and perpendicular to the face with the numbers which also cleared room for the edge.
When I started bending the teeth would hang over the numbered face of the tool and the edge itself would be "hooked" on the face I ground.
That is a weak explanation but I post some pictures to show what I mean.

The problem I had with this tool was there must be a two inch tail beyond what you bend and I didn't give myself that much room (dumb) and I wasn't able to get smooth bends. I ended up just hand bending the edges around my mdf template but I want to go back and see if I can make this tool work.

One word of caution, if you are going to take the approach I described make sure the tubing bender you buy has enough material to actually cut the track into. I recently discovered that if you try to do this with a cheap Harbor Freight tubing bender it will cut right through it and be useless. Try to find one like on the picture I posted. I got mine a Lowes.

Good luck.

dante wrote:One word of caution, if you are going to take the approach I described make sure the tubing bender you buy has enough material to actually cut the track into. I recently discovered that if you try to do this with a cheap Harbor Freight tubing bender it will cut right through it and be useless. Try to find one like on the picture I posted. I got mine a Lowes.

Good luck.

to use that 6.00 tool I found its easiest to cut a small notch in both the "top" and "bottom" of the bender...

works alright but you still end up working to keep the edge from bending.

With the modified pipe bender, does it work with a 1/2 inch pipe bender?

I have gone through almost all possibiblites for bending the edges and its driving me insane! i just want the edge to look pro.

schuss

Using the ring/ pipe benders, does anyone have any 3D bending issues with the edge twisting its cross-section as bent? Tightening up rads on a few edges I have seen the edges twist out of plane on me. Hammering them or apply pressure to the edge doesn't seem to work, hammering undoes the curvature and doesn't exactly make for great flange contact. Any suggestions? Thanks guys/ gals. Steve.

Kelvin - are you still out there, almost 15 years later? I was looking for input on using a ring roller to shape some steel edging and lucked upon this. The only problem is that the links to the photos you posted way back then no longer work. Might you still have them? It would be much appreciated.
Thanks. Mike

I don't know if Kelvin is still active here, or if he has old pics of his ring roller. I have some picks of mine if it helps: http://www.happymonkeysnowboards.com/Mo ... ge_Benders

Good luck!

Head Monkey - yeah! That helps considerably. Thanks very much. Mike