straightening wire

I straighten MIG wire for TIG welding using lock wire pliers to twist the wire, one end held in a vice and the other in the lock wire pliers, works very well. Not sure about 12g but then you can always do the same thing with an electric drill. Hopefully the galvanising won't have issue with the twist but easy enough to try and find out.

My trick is to put it between two 2x4's and roll the wire between them. This gets them pretty straight. If you have a lot of this to do, you can build a wire straightener with pegs or rollers made from cheap ball bearings. You bend it first against the original curve, then back the other way, but less bend, then back the first way, again less bend. You can pull many feet through the straightener at one time, then cut to she shorter lengths. I think they actually make commercial machines that do this, so you may be able to see photos of how they work.

Jon

That's my understanding of how they work. A friend of my dad's owned a freelance tool and die shop (Pofco, in Clackamas): I remember once when he was building just such a tool, as part of a larger production line for something built out of wire.

I suspect they need to be fiddled with to get the wire perfectly straight.

As an alternative, if you take a piece of bent up wire and you pull on it hard enough that it yields a bit all along its length, it'll be straight when you're done. I've used this in the past to straighten copper wire and I can attest to it working like a charm. I haven't had occasion to try it on anything harder.

Take a heavy slide hammer, lock the wire in it and the other end in a vice. Pull it tight then hit the weight hard a couple times. The shock will stretch the wire just enough to straighten it. If you don't have a slide hammer use a chunk of weight with a hole in the middle, slide the wire into the hole, clamp a pair of vice grips on the end and hit the weight against the vice grips.

Some time back, an RCMer from the golden years wrote this about this very subject.

We routinely straighten music wire of all diameters at work. We use it for hinge pins on aircraft. Our music wire comes in large rolls. The way we do it, is to take a piece of tubing and bend it in sort of a relaxed z shape as below.

---------\ \ \-------------

Clamp this in a vise. Cut the wire to length, and insert one end into an air or electric drill. Insert the other end into the opening of the bent tube, and turn on drill, and force wire through the bent tube. Once its through a bit on the other end, then place the ch=uck on this end, and then just run drill and pull the wire through the bent tube.. Push it back and forth a few times, and when it comes out it will be straight. A little oil may make it easier. We have straightened music wire up to .185 this way. foxeye

It works pretty well.

Paul K. Dickman

A Pyramid Straightener consists of at least 3 wheels per plane of wire to be straightened. one of the wheels is adjustable, often many groups of three wheels on many planes are used.

Do you have any expereince with wire? :)

karl

Now tell us how you perm your wire brushes, too, sweetie!

I just pull wire between clamped down or stepped on wooden blocks. Sometimes pulling the wire out from between them at an angle helps, even though you can then get a gentle curl in the wire.

Basically it's easier to work with long pieces of wire instead of little chopped up pieces. You can even string up some of the wire between posts or trees and walk back and forth a couple times with the wooden blocks. I've done this too.

Assuming there's a decent amount on the spool, this kind of thing might work:

I've used this kind of thing to straighten AWG 8 (about 1/8" diameter) base-metal alloy wires.

You could probably whip something like that up with cheap skateboard bearings.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Some, but I'm still ignorant!

Most Oil tempered or High Tensile wire has a "memory" of being straightened at the mill even though it has sat in open coil form for years. Stainless Steel has to be re-straightened in less than a year if kept in open coil form.

Um, I meant crimped wire brushes. How you do dat?

Simple, the wire passes through a set of gears.

I believe I'd run it through a couple of 2x4 in a vice. I'd hook the wire to the back of my truck and pull 20-30' at a time then cut to shorter lengths as needed

InstaPerm!