Bead Roller Kit: Princess Auto/Harbor Freight

[Stuart Fedak]

Text removed as information is no longer current

[Grant Bowker]

As you say, there are many versions of the same thing out there. Eastwood and Woodward Fab also sell them. Sometimes retailers like Jeg's or Summit Racing will have better prices than the "manufacturer".
They do distort in use, more on heavier metal (of course). I will post photos of what I did to stiffen one later.

[Barry Churcher]

Hi Stuart
Bob, that works for me made his own bead roller and it works great. The one photo shows where we were playing with stiffening panels and the other photo shows a try at the top detail on a 13 cab door skin.
Cheers,
Barry

[Grant Bowker]

Originally Posted by Stuart Fedak

Grant, do you have the bead roller at the barn? I will try mine out on thin material first, but then do the stiffening up, to allow 18 and 16 gauge material to be formed. The next stage will be looking for the slow RPM motor control. It looks like some sewing machine motors would do the job as well. Just need to get the gearing/RPM worked out.

I may have to make up some more dies as well, to get some of the other shapes that I will need, but that will come after more experience.

Cheers!
Stuart

It is normally at the barn but at the moment is at home.

[Jordan Baker]

I picked up one of the bead roller kits from Princess Auto the other week. Out of the box I could flex the whole assembly by hand. So I welded on 2" thick walled square tubing along the top and bottom edges. I also welded in a piece to join the two. Now i can easily roll 16ga. I would still like to make a fence attachment so that I can make nice straight beads.

[Bob Carriere]

There are a number of site on Utube that shows how to beef up the bead rollers.

Grant beefed up is bead roller with similar brackets and we installed a Volvo leather wrapped steering whell instead of the crank..... make for a smoother cranking speed..... mounted on a foot made of 4 inch x 1/4 inch well casing pipe and welded to a 20 inch commercial not CMP rim.....

Very sturdy.....with multi passes it can handle healthy sheet metal with no deflection. He is working on a special fence for a particular application and more fences for specific uses can be made. It really requires two to operate accurately.... I do the cranking and Grant guides the pieces...

We have used it to set the offset on the patches for his top and will do the same for mine.

Cheers

[Alex van de Wetering]

What a coincidence! I just bought one last week, with the view of making the top cab rear wall for the C8, the moulding along the roof and one day maybe rear fenders with the wire inserted in the edge....(anyone tried that yet with one of these bead rollers?)
Here in Holland the same Chinese bead rollers are sold by HBM-machines in Moordrecht.

Guys, thanks for the ideas and links on beefing up the frame.

Alex