After reading the revies by Armorama, PMMS, and Track Link for the Ausfwerks Fender Bender, I decided to place an order and was pleasantly surprised last night when it arrived on my doorstep, so more of these should start popping up for those who placed Pre-Orders. .

While the name suggests that it's aimed at bending fenders and long pieces of sheet brass/aluminum stock, I decided to give it a whirl in the detail department as that's an area that often causes me to hesitate due to complexity/consistency among other issues All comments are my opinions only based on personal use/tests and are not affiliated with the seller in any way.

A proper test subject was needed, so I rummaged around in the spares box and dug out the Voyager Flak 36 detail set to see if I could find some complex/tiny stuff to test the FB out on.



Selected my victim with care...my wife says I'm cruel as the piece in question looks vaguely human shaped...I assured her that had nothing to do with the choice...she still thinks I'm crazy.



Following the instructions, I proceeded with the three bends required, doing the long bends first.





The reviewers are right in that thinking out the bending strategy can pay off, I was able to do all three bends without resorting to tweezers or flat nose pliers.



I proceeded to experiment further and tried out different angled pieces and some, in particular the box lid, that had very tiny bend tolerances for flanges at less than 0.5mm, to see if the machine would slip or damage the pieces. All the pieces below were done with the FB, smooth and easy without any problems.



I'm very pleased with the results and forsee it becoming a very valuable tool in the [auto-censored]nal even though I don't typically do a lot of fender type work, this may change that and will definitely enhance my ability to work with the smaller stuff as well. The more I played with it the more possibilities opened up since it can do both inside and outside bends with the same ease of motion. My only complaint would be the lack of any kind of angle gradient indicator for non-90 degree bends, hopefully they will add that in future releases.

Well worth the asking price IMHO and congrats to Armorama for the accuracy with the review, it does everything the reviews say it can reliably and easy. Link to more info from Ausfwerks: http://www.ausfwerks.com

Hi Bill!
Glad to see that you are having as much fun with the Fenderbender as I am mate! In regards to the gradient marks, my friend, I too agree that a scale would be most helpful in the long run...but in the meantime, my Starret Protractor alongside my Fenderbender will have to do!
~Gunny

If I could get an overlay for my glasses, I'd be in great shape! :-)

I thought about trying to etch in my own gradient lines but wasn't sure if 1) I could actually do it with anything short of a Ginsu knife and 2) if that would void the warranty...so the protractor idea may have to suffice.

Looks like a well constructed tool to me however I do have a question as I am unexperienced with photoetch. What is the advantage of this tool over an Etchmate or Hold & Fold which seem to be designed to do the same thing?

Hi David!
Essentially, mate, all three tools do the same operation, ie, bend metal....but the main difference between the others and the Fenderbender is, this tool bends metal without an additional outside source, such as a razorblade, or table top, to make the bend...the fenderbender is a self contained unit with it's own lifting table, where the others do not have this feature...there are benefits and downfalls to everything,and all three of these tools are included, so if you are in the market for a PE tool of this nature, it will pay to shop around, pay attention to what reviewers are saying, and talk to modelers who use the tools before shucking out a chunk of hard earned cash for this, or any other tool...
~Gunny

Thanks Gunny
I bought an Etchmate about a year ago and finally hope tp try it soon. I thought it was like everything else I buy, as soon as I buy it I find it or something better for less. :-)
I hoping the Etchmate will work well for me.

David,
I'm sure the etchmate will work and work well for you , mate...All three tools are high quality precision tools, all designed with the same process in mind...but there are differences in each one, some subtle, some not, and these differences will make each tool attractive to different modelers...
~Gunny

In a recent review listed at Ausfwerks the reviewer said:
"Personally, the Fender Bender has found a place in my tool box for bending long items and heavy stock. It has replaced my Etchmate in this regard. I will probably still use my smaller Hold and Fold tools since I prefer the tactile feeling I became accustomed to with The Bug in my hand. I do recommend the Fender Bender for what the name implies, and for those that like to scratchbuild. A case in point would be the time a PE part was too thin so I used it as a patter to cut another from thicker stock. Bending said item took more than one try and the blade kept slipping. The blade slip was not as bad with the Etchmate thanks to the engraved groove but the bend radius was larger than I would have preferred."

After also reading all three reviews available at Ausfwerks I would tend to agree with the above. I suppose it comes down to what you build - I do not bend long items or heavy stock, I only bend armour fret and have found that 95% of the time the 2inch HnF can be used (it will happily do side skirts for a tiger). As 95% of the bends on these frets tend to be quite small, I always reach for this before the 8inch MKRV2 as it is easier to use. In all the time I have had both I have only used the 8" once or twice for bending - (It is great however as a jig for long lengths of Friul tracks.)

One useful feature of the HnF are the multiple built-in forms for making various sized grabhandles and acute angle folds. Despite others reservations about using a blade to make a fold, I have not yet had a single mishap in doing this.

Unless you intend to scratchbuild or bend long or heavy stock I'm not sure there is any major advantage over the smaller tools.

Of course this my experience as a 1:35 armour modeller, and I cannot speak for the ship guys and scratchbuilders.

Brian

:-) :-) :-) :-) :-)

Frankly, I was skeptical about just what the tolerances were on the FB as the reviews tended to focus more on the "Fender" element of the tool although Terry does comment in the PMMS review about the ability to handle some detail work as well. I don't do a lot of large scale PE work in terms of fenders or scratch-building and personally was interested in how well it could handle detail PE of the type common to 1/35 armor sets since that's what I normally face as a choice/option.

I have an EtchMate and have used that for bending detail PE previously (along with Ken's cheap methods :-) ) almost exclusively and the bends that I demonstrated in the pics above were never fully possible with it either because the clamp placement wasn't sufficient to hold the piece vs. the razor blade leverage or it wouldn't produce as clean of a bend line, requiring straightening with pliers or rebending. I can't comment on the H&F as I've not used them before.

What I can tell you is that after using the FB and trying everything I could think of to make it not be able to handle certain pieces (the box top in the pic above was a clincher) there wasn't anything in the 1/35 armor detail sets I had laying around that it couldn't be used for either 100% for all bends or the majority of the required bends with some additional finish work required with tweezers, finger pressure, etc. I even bent up a belt-and-buckle style clamp, finishing off the last bit of inserting the belt into the buckle with my finger tip (promptly lost it in the carpet in my excitement though... ), so it can be used to do the finer armor stuff as well easily IMHO. For me, the FB will replace my Etchmate hands-down, no questions about it, because the consistency and ease of the bending arm produces a crisp even degree of bend that I've never quite gotten with the Etchmate or pliers and this, to me, is a critical difference. By keeping the screws tightened down and using finger pressure on the plate, the speed of bending was dramatically increased...everything you see in the pic above was bent up in about 20 minutes total time...and about half that was just thinking about how I wanted to do the bend order more than anything else.

While there are some things that I will still use the tweezers and pliers for just as a convenience as a personal preference, the more I used the FB the more I got comfortable with it and the different finger arrangements. You can use it as a hand held bender or keeping one part on a desk/table as you prefer, I tried it both ways and the result was the same. I also found it very useful as an ad-hoc clamp with some of the smaller finger depths/widths but haven't really explored it that much just yet.