I am writing to let you know how pleased we at Harris Rebar in Vancouver, British Columbia, are with your EZE bender. We bought this bender about 3 years ago and have used on a regular basis. We own the #8 pull bender. This machine has been of great service to us and we use it regularly to bend a 20M (#6) and a 25M (#8.) Although the machine is not supposed to bend a 30M (#10,) we have used it occasionally for this bending. The bender has been used throughout the entire Canada Line rapid transit project with no problems and with much ease. The most common use for the bender is on the bending of the 20M (#6) spiral for the pier columns. The design for the project called for a 135° bend on the 20M spiral into the centre of the column. Without this bender, we would have to bend the spiral by hand with a rebar hickey and the product would not look as good as with your bender. The time it would take to bend by hand as well as the added people to do the job would be a lot more. Below is a photo that illustrates the bending of the spiral.

You can see the finished bending of the spirals (right). This is a one man operation as opposed to bending by hand that would surely be a two man operation. We had over 100 columns to build, all with this same detail.

Another common application for this bender is on the jobsite with bending of dowels. Sometimes column dowels need to be bent over into a slab. This may be caused by a change of design, a bad layout, or a detail error. When this happens, the column bars are more than likely too big to bend by hand. You have to use some sort of mechanical bender. We have used this extensively for this purpose. Up to 30M bar bending over into a slab and the engineer has no issue with the radius of bend put on the bar. If the bender is used for smaller sizes, 15M or 10M, the bend radius may be an issue. Another advantage to using this bender for bending over column vertical bars is the fact that the concrete won't chip off the already poured column below. In the past, without the bender, these column bars would get bent by hand with a hickey and sledge hammer. Quite often when using these tools, the bar would bend over at the poured concrete height and the concrete, only days old, would crack and chip off. This EZE bender ensures that doesn't happen.

To say the least, this bender has been of great service to us at Harris Rebar and would recommend its use to any rebar placer.

Regards,

Don Shahan
Harris Rebar - Vancouver