Bending Rebar

I was commisioned to make a octopus tentacle style music stand a few weeks ago and have been holding back on bending the rebar for the arms until now. I waited until the end of the job to do all the bending because I honestly had only a faint clue of how to go about doing this.

From what I learned in college I should anneal the metal and start bending, but this rebar is cheap stuff and I am afraid that it was galvanized. 

Galvanized = Zinc coating.

And heating up the steel to a point to get all the molecules to relax might release the zinc into the air and give me heavy metal fever. So instead I decided to start hand bending the steel with leverage and a vice. 

Here are a few throw-aways. Once the metal is bent it is super difficult to use it if it has a bad curve you don't like so I bought extra rebar.

Here is my stack of good bends that I was able to whip out pretty quickly once I got into a rhythm.

And this is a completed arm. The smaller bends I will have to cut a different pattern and use that to bend against.

Here you can sort of see my bending practice. I had a bolt sticking up from a post vise, so once I got the steel to bend that far around the circular form I could pause, take a breath, and keep bending until I went 360 around my form. 

More bending to go but using this makeshift jig really helps with productivity. The first bent "S" shape that i made took me over an hour to bend by hand, whereas bending the rebar with a long lever and a form I was able to get about 8 of the same bends. Tomorrow I will bend the smaller arch over a similar form.

Stay Tuned!