Straight out of the deepest bowels of China emerges a crate of mysteries and wonder; what could be inside?
Well, let's break the seal of this wooden tomb to find out.
Ok the quality of the hardware they used to put this crate together isn't inspiring much confidence, but it's at least commensurate with the price I paid.
Secrets revealed! It's a 24 inch box-and-pan brake.
First things first, let's strip off the... I dunno, whatever chemical it is that's 3c/gal cheaper than cosmoline and causes 6 times as much cancer.
Ok that's cleaner at least, and we also get to see the party trick of the box-and-pan brake: the removable fingers, which allow you to fit partially bent parts into the brake to perform further bends. Though obviously you wouldn't normally remove all of them at the same time.
It does give us a good look at the casting though, and I have to say I'm impressed.
I'm not sure I'd be able to make cast iron that uniformly porous if I tried. Well, let's hope they overbuilt this casting.
Anyway, the fingers go back into place so we can see how it looks.
Unsurprisingly, it looks cheap and Chinese. But how does it work?
Some leftover 24-gauge galvanized steel seems like a reasonable first test. This brake is supposed to be rated to bend up to 20-gauge.
The brake hungers to sink its teeth into metal.
A simple 90-ish degree bend should do.
And bend #1 appears to be a success. Let's go ahead and add another just to be sure.
Yup, that seems reasonable. Got a 5/8 flange, an inch wide trough, and whatever was left over as the other flange.
Now let's play around with the real party trick, doing a perpendicular bend.
Some decidedly sloppy notching should give us enough clearance (spoiler: it won't).
And using the 1 inch finger, the bend looks not half bad.
Let's just ignore the other side where I accidentally smashed the two flanges together instead of getting them to bypass cleanly.
Ah well, practice makes perfect. I should note that I have the machine set up here for a pretty gentle bend radius, which is adjustable using some cams at the back of the frame. I'll try tighter bends later, but for now this is a successful first test.
