Unpopular opinion: I miss the old way we used to roll tubes for a saddle bend.

Tbh, we'd just eyeball it with a piece of chalk and a torch, but now the shop foreman makes us use the digital tube bender for every single one. Anyone else think the old-school method built better intuition?

4 comments

4 Comments

the_rose23d ago

The old chalk and torch method taught you to feel the metal. Digital benders just remove that hands-on learning. You lose something when the machine does all the thinking.

kimr9123d ago

Yeah but digital benders are way more accurate and save a ton of time, so who cares about "feeling" the metal.

shane_wilson22d ago

I mean, if the machine's doing all the work, what are you even learning?

garcia.cameron23d ago

Oh man, here's the thing nobody's bringing up though... old school bending on a tube saddle actually taught you to spot bad tube way before it became a problem. With a digital bender you just feed it whatever and hope, but with chalk and a torch you'd catch those hairline cracks and weird grain patterns before you even made a bend. I've seen guys load a slightly corroded tube into a digital bender and it snaps halfway through, now you're out a whole piece and having to start over. At least with the old method you'd feel that resistance and stop before it went wrong.