Which steel bends easily?

[Olle]

Originally Posted by lugerholsterrepair

If I were doing this I might attempt it this way..Fashion a bar of steel with sharp edges and wrap your wire around it under as much tension as you can manage.. hammering the wire at the flats and corners with a lead or plastic mallet. Then cut your staple out with a rotary tool like a Dremel. Might take some adjustment on the size of the steel bar to get the size accurate enough but once it's perfected it would make a lot of staples quickly.

This project would be much less difficult if I could bend it first and then cut the legs to the correct length. The reason why I can't do that is that the ends need to be turned down to 2.5mm, which forms a shoulder that acts as a stop when you tap it into the frame. This means that I have to cut the rod to the exact length, turn both ends and center it carefully in the tool in order for the legs to come out the same length.

I have Walther's original drawing for this part and the cut length is 3mm longer than what I have found necessary, so it's quite possible that the factory had a way of trimming and forming the ends after the rod was bent.