Horace315,
But what happens to the metal when I heat it red hot to bend and cool it in water? Would I better off to let the part air cool? I "think" I understand what you're saying and please correct me if I'm wrong. By letting the metal cool "in the furnace", I take that you mean, let it cool slowly, am I right? But I have found by doing it that way, the metal is weaker now then it was before I bent it. Like I had said sometime back, I watched a worker on TV heat a piece of metal up, do his work then submerge the piece in water to retain the stiftness it orginally had. Matter of fact it just came to me, the guy was making a sword. Now that's a weapon that should take a lot of banging againist other swords and not bend or break.
Now I got from landing gears to swords but the process of altering metals I would think would be the same. The more I think about something, the more I think I may be wrong and that is after cold bending, lets say a 3/16 wire, the wire would be very strong, less likely to bend BUT more pron to break then bend. Is that right? What if after cold bending I heat the metal, would it revert back to where it was before I bent it? And if it did revert back, how would I know how much heat to apply?
Larry