Meanwhile, back in 2018
After some rock & roll excitement from the 1970s, back in 2018 we turn our minds to something a little more prosaic.
Today, I have mostly been making brake lines.
This may seem unnecessarily masochistic, when pre-bent kits are available from various places. I went DIY partly for entertainment value - pipe bending is another curiously satisfying pastime, and there's the extra fun of brake pedal roulette when it's time to use them.
The other reason was material choice. Pre-made pipes seem to be either mild steel (plain or coated), copper or kunifer (copper-nickel alloy). I'll admit that kunifer is probably the best stuff for the job, but without wishing to offend anyone who is using this excellent material, to me it looks wrong on an early car.
So I've gone with annealed stainless steel, which is also wrong, but looks a bit less offensive to my delicate eyes. It's not bad at all to work with, although a bit tougher than kunifer.