Clamp It, Jed!

 

The plastic handle on the chicken waterer broke recently. It wasn't too much of an inconvenience when the temperatures were below freezing since all I needed to do was move it outside the door, flip it over and pour water in. However, now that the temps are warming up, I turned the water back on to the sillcock so I can use the hose up close to the house to clean and fill, and then I have to carry the waterer back to the coop - it's a lot easier with a handle.

At both of the high schools I worked at, I had a Hossfeld #2 bender in the shop. They're just about the handiest thing going in a fab shop. The standard kit came with several attachments, a couple of which I never used, and a couple I used quite often. I also had tube bending dies I bought. There was one piece that was for bending square corners and another that was used on top of the bender for bending up round rings or making radius bends. 

The aluminum piece in the photo is the new handle for the chicken waterer. I would have used the square corner bending attachment if I had one for my Chinese baby-sized bender. Not that bending the piece in the photo was a toughie - it's that it's easy to control the finished size using the attachment. In my case, the handle needed to fit inside a couple of ears on top of the waterer, so the size had to be pretty close.

I've been thinking about making an attachment like that for my bender but I don't know how useful it would be with the small size of my bender. I would get some use out of the one for bending rings. Maybe add that to my wish list.

The clamps in the photo were only $2.99 each at Harbor Freight the other day. They seem to be well made and at that price, I think I'll keep them in the shop and maybe pick up another couple for the wood shop next time I go there. I was looking for a couple of the heavy duty 18" bar/spreader clamps. The cheapie ones break if you squeeze the handle too hard. The HD ones are supposed to have 375 lbs of clamping force but since they're plastic, they're pretty bulky. I took a pass on those. I might buy a couple more of the cheapies, I'll just have to remember to go easy on the squeezin'.