Home Made Rail Bender

You did a great job!   Very nice finish and well made. 

Only question I have is why did you make it so narrow?  Is this device intended for tight curves?  I would have thought the bearings could have been spaced further apart and possibly adding some additional ones when bending the rail for larger radii curves.

Very nice Tom. And in walnut no less.

Since you had the ability to turn down the stock bolts, perhaps you could have replaced one of the bearings with a disc, with an attached crank-arm. This would make it easier to feed the rail through. How are you doing it now, push and pull?

Allegheny, the farther apart the rollers are, the longer the un-bent portion is at the beginning and end of each section of rail. Also, the center roller could be adjusted to just touch the rail and not bend it at all.

Dave

Very interesting. Some day I want to try making something like this myself for 3-rail track.

One of the tricks with bending rail is maintaining the curve smoothly all the way to the end of the rail. For sharper curves where I can't avoid a rail joint in a curve, I might cut the rail end back after pre-curving the rail. Or solder the rail joint and then bend the curve. And use a bunch of spikes to help align the rail ends.

Kazar - Dave has it right on the narrow part.  If you want a 30 foot radius curve, this will do it.

Dave - I only have $6.60 into it, so the bearings appeared to be the way to go.  Yes, I could have turned out a disc on my Unimat, but what material would I use that would hold up as well as a hardened steel bearing?  Also, there is no friction by using the bearings.

A crank arm is not needed at all.  You push the rail through.  It also takes zero effort (maybe because of the bearings).

If you don't have a lathe, you can easily chuck up a 1/4-20 bolt in a hand drill and file.  There is not a whole lot of difference between the OD of the bolt and 6mm bearing.  The remainder of the pieces were cut up on a table saw.  The walnut cuts well  and nice and clean as opposed to pine or oak.  I also added a return spring at the top which works well.  I hand chiseled out relief in the back sides for the 3 bolts.  I used square as opposed to hex nuts.

I'm tickled with the outcome and was very surprised as to how easily and well this arrangement works.

Thanks...

Here is the thread of a homemade bender.

For bending Atlas three rail and Micro two rail.

Here's one I made on a similar concept. The fixed block has two pins and two springs to keep the sliding block from shifting. The block distance is set with a fine pitch bolt. I've used it to build some custom switches with good success.

Rail bent/formed by hand.  The large compass with the green ball point pen maintains the accurate curve, as the track and cork road bed are screwed in place. 

If all you want to do is bend rail by it's self then check with Fast track in Canada.  I got one of their benders which is intended to be used to prebend rail for hand made switches.  About $90.

I got rid of it because my need is for flex track.  Shoving entire  rail lengths back into tie strip can get real old real fast..

I considered removing rails from the Atlas 3 rail flex and bending them with a code 250 rail bender ,but decided that re-installing the rails would be a PITA. Also, you cannot remove the center rail. It has the plastic rib under it and it appears to be pinned in place.