If you're building in aluminum from scratch, one of the most
intractable problems is the need for an 8 ft bending brake for most
designs. A good one, even used, is about $1000, and at least half that
many pounds, although there are alternatives that weigh less.
http://www.guttersupply.com/products...ategoryId=1277
There are various ways to do a pretty good job with cheaper tooling,
but I think Dave Thatcher, the designer of the neat CX-4 VW powered
single seater

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CX4/
http://thatchercx4.com/

has the answer to our prayers:

-- In , "Dave Thatcher" thatchercx4@... wrote:

Gentlemen:
The Home Depot here in Pensacola rents out an eight foot portable
bending break that is used for on site bending of gutters.

This is a GREAT find. It makes me wonder if other tool rental places
have bending brakes.

Not every Home Depot has a full rental department. This link shows
the stores with Rental departments:
http://www.homedepot.com/cmc_upload/.../Store_Loc.pdf

It is ideal
for bending the aileron ,elevator, rudder, and wing tip trailing edges.
I rented it yesterday and made everything in about 5 hours.I even went
ahead and made two sets of ailerons. It sits right up on your
construction table. It rents for about $40.00 per day. The Home Depot
part number for this device is 1012600340.
This thing is going to make construction of the CX4 real easy and fast.
The foot is not adjustable, so you will need to bend two 8 ft long
strips of .020 about 2" wide to add to the foot. This will give you a
nice radius on your bends.
I have ask Herb to post pictures of the device in the photos section,
so be on the lookout for them.
Best regards,
Dave Thatcher

A video of Dave making clean, long bends at Sun and Fun with very
little tooling was very inspirational to my efforts towards finishing
my Teenie Two derivative, and I've got a blog entry that covers that
technique,

http://users.lmi.net/~ryoung/2006/11...ilders-of.html

but a real brake is even better.

If you want to try your hand at building a bending brake, I like this
one the best of the passel of homebuilt brakes I've seen on the web.

http://www.ch601.org/tools/bendbrake/brakeplans.pdf

I have not had good luck getting local sheet metal/HVAC shops to do
this sort of work. They're set up to do sharp, zero radius bends in
steel. If they even KNOW what "setback" means, they're too busy to
mess with it.