Do I need power disc brakes

[_Ogre]

any hand bent line will look hand bent and fly by night
for nice looking, tight to the frame your better of with straight line sections and a bender.
you can buy the steel lines at any auto parts store, your 50 yr old oem lines are steel
i bought a ss straight line kit from inlinetube.com and supplemented with some short straight sections
this way i only needed to flare maybe 5 ends
flaring ss tube requires a pro flaring tool, no $40 kit will work
once you figure out the bender, replacing all the lines is easy peasy

as far as power vs manual, that is a personal prefference
by converting to disc brakes; you will need to update the mc and replace all lines anyway
replacing the mc requires converting to hanging pedals or converting the underfloor mc
this is probably the hardest part
at this point, upgrading to power is easy and usually not much additional cost

[Dan in Pasadena]

Originally Posted by _Ogre

Any hand bent line will look hand bent and fly by night. For nice looking, tight-to-the-frame you're better of with straight line sections and a bender....

UGH, yeah I suspect you're right. I've read about straightening coiled lines by puling them through a small hole in a 2x4. I'm sure that would work...some....but not truly straight as I'd want them to be. I want to be able to say, "...I did them myself" - and be proud of how it looks.

Jeg's sells them in straight sections as the link shows. If I buy the nickel-copper lines it would only be straight, pre-flared & nutted lines and I'd STILL buy a bender to make the bends look clean. I won't much like it if the lines turn greenish. Maybe I could mildly polish them and rattle can clear them(?)
Quick question: When to use 1/4" and when to use 3/16"? Is it just one or the other, or 3/16" into the MC and 1/4" out near the wheels?

BTW, very sorry for the hijack. Back to the original question: No, I don't think you must have a power booster at all.