Cheep bead roller mods

[foxhole]

A while back we got a standard cheep 89 dollar china bead roller and fixed a few things so it works. First off i noticed there was less than a quarter of the range of motion of the hand crank when you felt really in control so we fabbed a wheel to replace the crank so you can be forever in the sweet spot

[foxhole]

rolled a peice of round into a hoop, spun a hub on the lathe that fit the shaft and drilled and tapped for a set screw. cut out some spokes and welded it all together for a simple yet sturdy wheel about 16-18 inches in diameter

[foxhole]

next user friendly issue was with the tension adjustment. It had a bolt which always required reaching for a wrench. Our answer was a nice finger knob bolt so you can make easy on the fly tension adjustments.

[foxhole]

also the tention just flopped around so we drilled and tapped and installed a spring so it only goes down how far it is tentioned instead of flopping down.

[foxhole]

next we addressed mounting, at first we clamped it in the vise when we used it but that tied up the vise so we made a tapered stake so it fit in the stake stand when in use.

[foxhole]

finally we addressed the issue of deflection by bending a couple if pieces of flat bar and welding them to the back. If any of you have one of these units i hope this helps make your bead rolling easier and more carefree.

[dccarpenter]

Very interesting mods, any chance of posting some pics of the work turned out from that? I' not very familiar with bead rollers.

[foxhole]

Originally Posted by dccarpenter

Very interesting mods, any chance of posting some pics of the work turned out from that? I' not very familiar with bead rollers.

bead roller is just two dies that roll shapes into sheet metal. dies come in steps and round beads and v's and you can spin up whatever you can imagine on the lathe to reproduce body lines and shapes otherwise near impossible to make like all those fancy little ribs in floor pans. here are a couple quick pics on a chunk of scrap. for the price of one of these cheep ones it is worth almost everyone having one, the mods just make it work like a unit ten times the cost.

[dammitmitchell]

wow. definatley good stuff there!

[piro222]

Wow! Nice job. It really almost looks like it was a quality unit made in the good ol' USA. Have had my eyes on buying that one but am still waiting for it to go on sale. Those are great examples of how to fix it up but will have to get my lathe running again though.

[Jonnythunder]

Great mods on that! I have the same roller, I really need to mod mine like that, as I've run into the same problems, mostly the deflection. Thanks!

[NONHOG]

I like what you've done there!

[Warrens69GMC]

Check out the bead rolling thread here (for ideas)

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/s...d.php?t=144995

[mbgmike]

Nice work but I would have made one from scratch after doing all that work but i have modified stuff to and realized it later. It came out real good. Now you need to put a motor on it. just kidding

[VA72C10]

nice mods!