Bending Brake - 5 footer built out of Clear Solid Douglas Fir. Lumber is 2 years old, super dry and staright as an arrow. Used 2 - 2 x 4 and 1 - 2 x 6(bending bed) and 3" house door hinges(6) - on 12' centers with 2+1/2" wood screws. This is super hard lumber to work with, heavy as hell eats up bits like crazy but works really well. Added a 2" strip of duct tape om the bending be and top radius board... the duct tape holds the part blank very tight and does not allow it to bow(banna shape) out. First part bent was an o.032 "L" angle 4" long and turned out staright as an arrow! Tried some 0.040 for test purposes and it worked ok... but was a little harder to bend yet the part turned our very well. Had some mis-givings at first building it out of lumber, but after a little research and some starts and stops(just about gave up)... using different types of lumber, decided that it could be done with D.Fir was the way to go. D.Fir does not warp as I started this 2 years ago and the lunber did not change at all during that time! Ever try driving nails into D.Fir... I worked building houses years ago and they used 2 x 10 for floor joints... this was construction grade... it was sure hard on nails and you new you had been driving nails into very hard wood when you were done, you had to avoid the knots as the nails could not penetrate at all! The whole brake cost less then $50 - can't beat that, hell of a deal!
When you are scratch building you require tools of all sorts and my first choice is to try and make some that works... after all soft aluminum is very forgiving stuff!