Dented Bending Leaf on Brake

Hi, I just bought a used Di-Acro straight brake but the bending leaf has a couple dents where it looks like someone tried to bend round bar. Do you know if I can hammer those dents back straight? The dents are not that bad, about 1/16 to 1/8 inch out of whack.

I don't know you so I can't speak for your skills, only You know if you can hammer the problems away. 1/16 to 1/8 sounds like a whole lot to me, but if it doesn't to you, then you have more fortitude for such challenges than I do, so I say proceed onward.

j c said:

Do you know if I can hammer those dents back straight? The dents are not that bad, about 1/16 to 1/8 inch out of whack.

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dkmc said:

I don't know you so I can't speak for your skills, only You know if you can hammer the problems away. 1/16 to 1/8 sounds like a whole lot to me, but if it doesn't to you, then you have more fortitude for such challenges than I do, so I say proceed onward.

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Thanks DK. I will give it a go. I looked again and I think it's more like a 1/32 bend. I think I will just put a dolly block under the leaf and hammer it flat. My hammering skills aren't the worst.

Use a good size piece of faced stock as a punch. AFAIK only the very edge is critical and it may be possible to slightly over-bend by hanging the edge off an anvil and then file/scrape/grind flush with the rest.

Weld it up and grind it down
Don


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Thanks a lot for the suggestions. I will try the hammering, filing, then if I mess up, the welding. I think it's small enough where I won't need to fill in anything with welding for now.

Without seeing what you are dealing with this might sound like a silly question, but have you bent anything in the brake yet and seen issues from these spots?

I have never owned a new leaf brake, and all the old ones I have been around showed there age / probably had nicks and dings here and there. If someone repeatedly bent round bar in this it could be likely that the overall length is tweaked now also, and could be a more serious issue than the dents in the edge. I always tried to bring some material to test bend the brake before buying out of fear that the thing was abused and will never bend correctly. (though never had issues with the few I have bought)

If you need to fix spots (only if they show up in bends) I personally would just grind/file them down, and would definitely skip trying to hammer them out. I am doubtful you would ever be affected by that a 1/32 of missing bending edge.

Thanks for the suggestions. I managed to hammer it down with a piece of steel underneath it. It flattened out nicely. Lots of light blows with the hammer. Then I took a stone to it and managed to get the edge nice and sharp. It seems to bend well now. It's a Di-Acro, so it's pretty heavy duty even thought it's a small brake.

I knew you could do it

Thank you Sir!