Keep on Rollin' baby...

Dang... 2 blog posts within an hour!
I'm on a roll... GET IT?

I'm funny.

So Fred the body-man and I went in on this Harbor Freight tubing roller together. I needed it for my motorcycle frame, and he wanted it for some custom car, garage stuff that he does. I think combining the 20% off coupon, plus the holiday sale, plus our (undeniably ravishing) good looks, we spent about $50 a piece for it. It pretty much lives at his garage, but it was a necessity for me and I was glad to go in halves with him on it instead of me paying for all of it for what may be a one-project use.
I could probably use it on my next motorcycle project, but I won't bring that up to my wife just yet...

So, this roller came with 1 inch, and 1.5 inch, round tubing dies... how convenient! That happens to be EXACTLY the diameters of tubing I'm using on my bike! How'd they know?
I mounted it to my vise using a length of 2x4 and started rolling. There are lots of 4x4 guys using this roller to make custom rock crawler roll cages and bumpers, and there are lots of youtube videos showing it... but I didn't know how much effort really went into it. Those guys must be bodybuilders because it took me about an hour and a half to go from this:

to THIS:

My hands and shoulders were actually sore. That is 1.5 x .083 wall-thickness tubing. I think the 4x4 guys are using at least .120?! Anyway, I guess that says something about my upper body strength doesn't it? Actually, to give myself a little grace, there is a guy selling a "tubing roller side-plate kit" which repositions the lower rollers farther apart which in turn, reduces the amount of force needed to bend, and run the tubing through the roller. He too must be a 135 pound hulk like me...

So, when rough-cut and mitered we're actually starting to take shape:

Now here's where I have to honestly say that I'm giddy looking at this picture. I have spent so much time thinking, drawing, planning, tooling, and then re-thinking, re-drawing and re-tooling this thing, and to see it like this makes me smile. Even if you hate it, and think it's a stupid project, I get all warm and tingly seeing all that time and effort manifest itself into a tangible, 3D object.
Dang. I did that.
Makes me feel good. I have TONS more to go, and to try and plan everything out all at once is truly overwhelming to me, but maybe it's a good thing that I have such a small budget. It gives me the time and freedom to really make sure I can plan out, and continue on with that next step.

Thanks for being there to share this with me.
Until next time...