Hi. I'm new here and in fact am a woodworker who is in the process of releasing a line of high end furniture. I am blending wood with metal for trim
pieces and have a minor problem I need help with.
I need to bend 1/8" square stainless bar stock around numerous radiused corners. Now, on these corners I guess they would equal a 3/4" cylinder. I'm not sure how exactly to describe them.
Picture a large rectangle approx. three feet by two feet with the corners radiused. So it's a 90 degree bend basically.
Well, I could not seem to find 1/8" square aluminum bar for the trim but I did get the stainless and it arrived today. This bar stock will be inserted into a groove that is just deep enough to allow 1/16 of the bar stock to protrude above the surface of the wood. Multiple bars will provide an Art Deco motif on the wood.
In a simple bend test I found that by trying to bend the bar around a corner on the bench with my bare hand resulted in the stock twisting as it bent. I ordered a bench bender from Grizzly thinking I could make the bends that way but cancelled when I realized that I would either need some way to accurately bend the bar to fit the corners or bend the stock directly on the wood as a form.
So that's my question. What is the best way to approach this? I thought that one way might be to attach the stock in the groove along the straight sections and when I came to the corners clamp the stock tight and bend the stock around the radius. It seems feasible if I could find a way to bend this stainless without twisting it and keeping it square to fit the groove.
Any ideas would be most welcome. Thanks.