How can I bend this ?

Another trick - I assume that the inside face will not be seen. With an angle grinder, grind a groove along the line of the fold and reduce the thickness of the sheet by half (0.5mm deep) on the back face. With minimal blocks of wood as others have shown, folding along the line will be both accurate and will require much less force. In my opinion, do not use a hammer / mallet etc, just leaning on the blocks of wood will be sufficient.

Bob

Andy-G is quite right, 1mm stainless sheet is about the limit of the technique I described, and it will need more than chipboard or MDF. The two pieces of steel sound OK, and a layer of masking tape usually protects against marking. Remember stiffness is a cube law, 0.5mm should be 8 times easier to bend than 1mm! As he says, a hard hardwood piece (eg beech, oak) to make the corner of the bend is indicated, Mahoganoid will be no better than softwood.

If the bend angle is made too great, place the corner edge on a flat (expendable) piece of wood, put a bar 10mm or 15mm diameter inside the corner, and hammer it via a another wood board to “draw" the angle (this will spoil the bar for precision purposes).

On grooving the bend line, this will certainly concentrate the bending. Best would be to mill it with a ball nose cutter, avoid a very narrow groove which may result in cracking. Unless you can keep an angle grinder very straight, the wavering will show on the other side when bent.

Or perhaps start with 0.5mm stainless sheet.

Many thanks again for all the tips.

I ground a groove along the bend line using a piece of steel as a guide as suggested by Speedy (the ground groove won't be visible). Then made the bend mostly by hand and with a rubber mallet and piece of wood. Seemed to work OK and the finished piece is more than adeqauate for my needs.

Hi Ifoggy, looks a neat job, well done.

Regards Nick.