Your best bet is to take your measurements, a sketch of what you want done
and a lot of pictures to a fabricator in Miami if you want a good job done.
Ace in Ft. Lauderdale does good work too. Most of them work in 304 tube
though. You may have to provide the 316. yourself but OTOH they will
probably be able to get a better price than you can. They can also TIG weld
the joints which can be a lot more complicated to get right than the
bending.

Even at the price I paid it is not worth the risk of doing it yourself
without the right equipment. My benders cost less than $400 to build but I
have $20K worth of tools to build them with.

--
Glenn Ashmore

I'm building a 45' cutter in strip/composite. Watch my progress (or lack
there of) at: http://www.rutuonline.com
Shameless Commercial Division: http://www.spade-anchor-us.com

"Joe Bleau" wrote in message
...
Glenn--

I am with you. Here is my problem. My boat is in the Fla. Keys. I
have tried everywhere to find a shop to do this for me. The last guy
took a deposit and then kept me waiting for months. He just returned
the deposit saying that he was too busy to do the job. If I am going
to get it done I am going to have to do it myself.

I have thought that I might try to form it exactly with something like
EMT and then take it as a model to a shop in Miami to do the job. No
hoe of getting it done here in the Keys where most all of the trades
have been driven out by the cost of living. Also, there is a disease
down here known as "Keys disease." The syptoms are chronic laziness
and the abandonment of all work ethic. It's always been difficult to
get anything done here and the 200 per cent increase in property
values in the last four years has done nothing to alleviate the
situation.

On Sat, 25 Mar 2006 20:08:32 -0500, "Glenn Ashmore"
wrote:

If you are talking about 7/8 & 1" stainless for pulpits you better find
someone with the right equipment or you will end up with a lot of
expensive
junk. Sand packing works OK on softer material but is not really going to
help with stainless and 1" tube on anything under a 12" radius will
require
hydraulics or a looong lever handle.

Bending polished stainless tube with decent results requires a set of
polished dies built to exact diameters. I built a couple of benders, a
roll
bender for long sweeps and a hydraulic for the tight ones.
http://www.rutuonline.com/html/tube_benders.html
You can get plans and dies he http://www.pro-tools.com/200k.htm . A
set of dies for 1" tube costs about $180.