# Homemade Tools >  Ring Rollers

## Iliketobuild

In the process of building a boat I ran into a problem which required the fabrication of a new tool. The rub rails for the boat are schedule 40 aluminum pipe 2 1/2" in diameter. They require significant bending along a radius of approximately 14'. I tried numerous ways to bend the pipe without a roller and wound up kinking the pipe every time. After consulting some commercial boat builders the general consensus was that a ring roller was needed. Heavy duty commercial ring rollers are extremely expensive so I decided to build one. My design utilizes 7/8" plate sides (that just happened to be the thickness I could find used). The shafts are a little less than 2" in diameter, riding on huge tapered roller bearings that are adjusted for end play using castle nuts and cotter pins. The roller shafts are driven with #80 chain and a huge gear box. I've use a VFD to control the speed and direction of the rollers. All the dies for the roller were made from a piece of 6" diameter steel repurposed from a sewage treatment plant in Michigan. The roller has worked very well, bending huge pipes without any kinking. The pipes are bent then compared to a full-size template of the radius. After the pipes are bent they are split on a band saw. Sorry for some of the pictures, the downloading software rotates them and I can't fix the problem. If anyone knows how to fix this problem let me know, I have more tools to post.

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Jon (Dec 15, 2015),

kbalch (Dec 15, 2015),

NortonDommi (Dec 11, 2018),

Paul Jones (Dec 15, 2015),

PJs (Dec 17, 2015)

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## DIYer

Thanks Iliketobuild! We've added your Ring Roller to our Ring Rollers category, as well as to your builder page: Iliketobuild's Homemade Tools. Your receipt:












Ring Roller
 by Iliketobuild

tags: ring roller

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## DIYer

Thanks Iliketobuild! We've added your Roller Dies to our Metalworking category, as well as to your builder page: Iliketobuild's Homemade Tools. Your receipt:












Roller Dies
 by Iliketobuild

tags: ring roller, die

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## DIYer

Thanks Iliketobuild! We've added your Radius Turning Tool to our Machining category, as well as to your builder page: Iliketobuild's Homemade Tools. Your receipt:












Radius Turning Tool
 by Iliketobuild

tags: radius, turning

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## Leprechaun

> ... 
> Sorry for some of the pictures, the downloading software rotates them and I can't fix the problem. If anyone knows how to fix this problem let me know, I have more tools to post. 
> ...



I've noticed the problem and it has to do with a site's software configuration for displaying images. Sometimes the wide images are rotated (as seems to be your situation) and sometimes tall images are rotated. The simple 'solution' is to crop a copy of your pics to be sorta close to square. (I don't know how close; my experience is they don't have to be exactly or even really close to square, but you might need to experiment.) Hope you get it working, cuz I sure want to see more!

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Paul Jones (Dec 17, 2015)

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## Philip Davies

Admirable!

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## Iliketobuild

Leprechaun, thanks for the tip. Will try it on the next post.


Bob

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## Iliketobuild

It was fun to make but took lots of precision machining to get everything to fit and work smoothly.

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## Paul Jones

Speaking of precision machining, I like the large-sized radius cutting tool you built for your lathe. Looks like it can handle some large parts.

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## Iliketobuild

Yes, it works surprisingly well, made it out of some scrap material I had laying around. It is custom fit for my 13" Southbend lathe.

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Paul Jones (Dec 18, 2015)

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## Jon

> I've noticed the problem and it has to do with a site's software configuration for displaying images. Sometimes the wide images are rotated (as seems to be your situation) and sometimes tall images are rotated. The simple 'solution' is to crop a copy of your pics to be sorta close to square. (I don't know how close; my experience is they don't have to be exactly or even really close to square, but you might need to experiment.) Hope you get it working, cuz I sure want to see more!



You're right about this. There is a back-and-forth about this exact subject with this forum software's customers and developers, here: How do I disable images from auto-rotating - vBulletin Community Forum, with the end result being that this is not a bug. I disagree, and I've just installed a fix for this that makes an image orientation decision based on the image's EXIF data.

It will not retroactively orient all previously-uploaded pictures, but the goal is to properly handle future jpeg images. Let's keep an eye on this going forward and make sure it works properly.

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DIYer (Dec 21, 2015),

Paul Jones (Dec 21, 2015)

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