A lot of the best gun makers in the world are under the same rock as me Mike. We prefer it to the alternative.
I now have to keep in mind that all the best gun builders have these barrel bending contraptions set up in their shop somewhere, that's a large pill to swallow. The time it took you to build just your "machine" is probably the same amount of time I have spent bending every barrel I have ever bent. I just don't have the time or resources to fiddle the day away making contraptions and gadgets when 2 4X4's and my foot will accomplish the same thing in less than a minute. I honestly don't know how you would feel the "give" in the barrel using a "C" clamp set up or the crazy space machine thingus..
Did you ever talk to Don Getz about how he bent barrels....he probably wouldn't have been qualified to know anything about it I suppose...
I suppose Dickert and all those fellows had these barrel bending contraptions back in the day as well.
For those of you that have never bent a barrel by "hand" it's pretty scary . Once you do it you'll wonder what the big deal is. I use two different methods. I tried whacking the barrel against a telephone poll one time, but it hurt my hands and didn't bend....I also felt I didn't have any control, never tried it again. I used to use a crotch in a tree also, it works fine and you have good control and can "feel" the bend when it lets go. These days I throw two 4X4's on the floor and place the barrel on top. I put my foot somewhere around the middle of the barrel and start to apply pressure by standing on the barrel. Some of the oct barreled smooth rifle barrels can give you a pretty good bounce.
You'll feel the barrel "give" once it actually bends. I set a 4' straight edge against the barrel to see how much it has bent. I generally put the barrel back in the gun at this point and see where it shoots. If it doesn't shoot where I want I'll bend it again. I recheck with a straight edge to see how much more bend I got then reassemble and shoot. On good days I can usually do one bend and I'm set. The average is probably two, and a bad day would be three bends, the last one because I went too far. This stuff is not rocket science, it's really simple.
You will not kink the barrel using two 4X4's on the floor so don't worry about it. The only way you could kink a barrel in a tree crotch is if you were born a moron. The only kinked barrel I have seen was on a gun I built that flew out of a truck cab on a roll over. The last foot was bent probably 90* to the left. I straightened the barrel but you could still see the kink from the outside and the bore was kinked as well. I declared it dead. Several years later I saw some guy carrying it around for sale as a shooter. Of course he was selling it with a kinked barrel for more than I sold it for new....
Somebody had restored the gun (It was badly shattered through the wrist) and this guy was shooting it bare ball. He stated it shot fine. I think someone like Hoyt probably could have bored it out to the next size up or put a liner in it and it would have been fine.
