Bending Fretwire and the Start of Fret Installation

Fret wire must be bent to approximately the radius of the neck at the fret in which it is to be installed.  Most authorities suggest bending it a little tighter than that.  In my case, I've got a conical (compound) radius neck that goes from 10" at the nut to about 14" radius at the end of the board.  I settled on 9" as a good radius for the whole thing.

Bending fret wire is not a simple matter of grabbing both ends and pulling them together into a circular shape.  I know, I tried it!  What happens is that the wire starts to bend non-asymmetrically, so that tang that is supposed to go into the fret slot is not perpendicular to the plane of the bend.  In fact, there is no plane of the bend, the thing starts to curl up.  Above all the fret wire must be straight when viewed from the top, and a curlicue ain't gonna cut it.

Inspired by fret benders described at various places on the internet (themselves apparently inspired by this fancy StewMac version), I made my own.  It's stupid looking:

The metal roller is two larger washers with a thin small washer between them - this makes a slot for the fret tang to ride in.  The two rubber rollers are (I think) part of the suspension system for a ceiling fan.  You would force the wire through the bent path so that its face runs against the rubber rollers and the fret tang rides in the metal washer roller.  Unfortunately, when you try to use it like this, the crummy little axles (a 3" threaded rod and two 5/16" utility knife handles) go all non-perpendicular and the wire starts bending wrong and gets bound up in the washer slot.

So I made it a two-sided contraption with 1" pine for spacers and the roller axles going through both pieces:

Well, it worked!  I guessed at the distance between the metal roller and the line drawn between the axles of the rubber rollers.  The produced a radius of about 12" or so (estimated).  In the next picture you can see the fret wire near a 9" radius line drawn on a plastic table:

Then I drilled new holes in the boards so I could move the metal roller about 1/4" closer to the line connecting the rubber rollers.  Then I'd run the wire through the new configuration:

And tighten the radius in stages.  Important?  I don't know.  Accidental?  Completely.  This second bending stage did the trick almost perfectly:

Then I modified my 60lb bag of tube sand  (yes, tube sand - apparently we have that in Connecticut) into a 25lb bag of sand, to use as a neck rest when I hammer the frets in:

Very exciting!  A whole day spent bending some wire - but it was free, and it could have turned out far, far worse.