how much can I bend wire?

[davidsamuelson]

Hi,
I want to bend some 14mm Dyform wire over a seagull striker. Can anyone give me the minimum safe bend radius, please. Where would I find tables for this and other wires for future reference? Thanks in advance for some help
Have a good day everyone out there, David

[Brion Toss]

Hello,
Dyform is a very stiff wire, so is less tolerant of bending than even 1x19, but as we are talking about a static bend here, you can get away with a significant bend without weakening the wire. Consider that Dyform is frequently used for upper and intermediate shrouds, with take bends where they pass over spreaders. Slight bends will not bother Dyform -- or rod for that matter -- and it is only as radiuses get very tight that hyperbolic stress concentrations crop up.
For your application, it should be easy to weld a bent half-tube, extra-stout, to the end of your martingale. It could give you an effective radius of 2" or more, if you wanted, though less would be fine.
Fair leads,
Brion Toss