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Re: Aquatic Plants Digest V3 #1149



<snip>
I've been trying to find a company that can bend a piece of 24 inch 
wide
glass into a 'U' shape with about 4 feet of flat 'legs' and a 24 inch
diameter bend.  I'm wanting to build a tank with a bullet nose shape on 
one
end.  (Sort of like the big tank that the space-benders in Dune occupy 
-
very art deco).  None of the fabricators can make the bend with the 
flat
'legs' as a single piece (that would form the flat sides of the tank.)  
They
can make the radiused end, but that would mean a butt-joint between the
curved glass and the flats.  I can imagine a cabinet design that would
conceal the joints behind a vertical wood frame, but I don't know about 
the
strength of the joint itself.  I thought about adding a 2 inch wide 
piece of
glass vertically to form a 'T' at the joint intersection so the joint 
would
be stiffer and behave more like a corner joint.  Any thoughts?
<snip>
While I have my doubts about this being very feasable with glass, I 
feel shure that you can get what you want done in acrylic (probably with 
only one seam total in the sides). I have seen a device, called a 
"Plexi-Bender," which works astounding maricles at the comparatively low 
bending temperatures of acrylic materials. Because I was volunteering at 
a museum where they have one of these devices to bend plexi-glass for 
display cases my "MacQuarium" (an old Macintosh SE turned into an 
aquarium) has about a gallon of extra volume since instead of being bent 
into a simple box shape has at least three extra bends and proably an 
extra gallon of capacity (It occupies the whole volume of the computer 
case, bending to fit the smaller area in the bottom, which the origonal 
design called for filling with support blocks.)
The place where I got my Plexi-glass had never heard of the 
Plexi-Bender, and only used a torch-device to make simple bends. With 
the Plexi-Bender I watched as several non-right-angle bends were made, 
and I'm shure that in the hands of a skilled craftsman the kind of large 
bend you describe could be accomplished. I also saw devices, again 
unknown to the salesman that I got the plexi-glass from, which are 
designed solely to flatten the edges of acrylic sheets, allowing for 
tight bonds using only the thin (like water) acrylic bonding cement. 
Those would be the supplies and equipment that I would look for if I 
were trying to accomplish your goal (and now that I have seen the idea I 
might).