Shade-Tree Metal Hardening

Tim Wescott · 2009-07-25T22:53:55+00:00

I'm going to make a wire-bending fixture for putting fairly small-radius bends into 1/8" music wire*. I have some 1/8" oil hardening drill rod and a slightly undersized 1/8" reamer designed for installing dowel pins in tooling. I also have some 1-1/4" round bar, made of mystery steel but there's a good chance that it'll harden at least a bit if encouraged.So I'm planning on putting a couple of pins made out of the drill rod into the end of a bar, and bending the music wire around the pins. I'm _assuming_ that if I don't harden the drill rod that it'll bend, although I'm in a hurry so I'm going to test that assumption by trying to use the tool.After I bend up my first attempt at a fixture I'll want to do it up right. It seems like I should just be able to heat up my whole assembly to a dull red then chuck the thing into a bucket of water -- does this sound correct? I have some pottery clay lying around so I'll probably paint the pins with clay & charcoal in an attempt to protect them from decarburization. When I fish it out of the bucket should I try tempering it? If so, how, and how much?The heat-generating tools I have available are pretty much a propane torch and an O-A cutting torch. The temperature measurement tools I have are my own somewhat color blind eyes.* Music wire is moderately high carbon -- 0.7 to 0.9%, and drawn in a way that work-hardens it nicely. It's soft enough that you can cut it with diagonal cutters successfully, but hard enough that you'd better hide the cutters from their rightful owner when you're done.

Jul 25, 2009 21 Replies

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Tim Wescott 16 years ago

Two pins, about half again the diameter of the wire to be bent, spaced about three wire diameters apart on center.

I.e., for 1/8 wire a pair of 3/16" pins about 3/8" apart (I used .4", 'cause it made the math easier as I cranked my table around).

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Leon Fisk 16 years ago

Here is an elcheapo little jig that can be found for sale in a lot of places:

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Another inexpensive wire bender from same:

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This is another one that I like the looks of, WT has about the cheapest price I've found for it, Micro-Mark has it too:

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I would like to see some measurements and/or plans for the latter. Looks decent and shouldn't be too difficult to build.

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