Which steel bends easily?

[Olle]

Originally Posted by lugerholsterrepair

If this small step on the ends of each leg is not extremely critical you might play with a Dremel sanding drum. I have found you can sand round rod like you need with the Dremel..clamp vice grips as a stop and let the drum naturally rotate around the wire tip from centrifical force and with a little practice I bet you could get a good enough trim. Dremel makes a very fine sanding drum that wouldn't take off too much per rotation. Worth a try..of course I am Bubba personified..I use a one half inch hand drill for a lathe.

I have actually done something very similar in the past, but with a file. I taped the loop where the step needed to be, and clamped it in the vise with the legs sticking up and flush with the tape. Then I used a "safe side" file to file down the ends, using the vise jaws as a guide. I found that filing them to a square first was the best way to stay on center, and once I had them squared to the correct dimension I rounded them off. It was actually a surprisingly quick and accurate method. I was planning to use Loctite, but I tapped it in for a dry fit and it stuck so well that I left it like that. Anyway, it seems like I'm going to make quite a few of these loops, so hand filing is not really an option.

And there's nothing wrong with using a power drill for a lathe, it's the quickest and easiest way to shave stubborn pins a tad and it's also the perfect way to reshape buggered screw heads. The easier, the better.