http://www.leevalley.com/us/gifts/page.aspx?c=&p=32012&cat=4,104,53202,53206&ap=1 Don McGill has the correct tool for bending music wire. This tool is the only correct way to bend music wire. When bending music wire, the radius in the inside corner must never be less than the diameter of the wire. A radius of 1 1/2 times the dia. is much better. When I had my gunsmithing business, I made more springs than I can count. These springs were made from music wire, spring steel and Ni-Chrome wire. Many of the springs were hand forged, hardened and tempered. The great success I had in making these springs came from completing and understanding the metalurgy courses I did when I went to college. There is no way I would attempt to harden and temper music wire as described above. This is really a true hit or miss style of doing heat treatment. You might be lucky enough to succeed a few times, but one day you will lose a very valuable aircraft when the landing gear fails and the plane cartwheels into a pile of balsa. If a series of bends are to be made, make a set of soft steel jaws for your workshop vice. File the required radius on the verticle end of the jaws, position the music wire and bend it around using a hammer and tapping the wire carefully. Thick wire eg. 3/16" dia. will need to be hit hard. Bending the wire will strain harden (also called workharden) it at the bend but not enought to cause it to become damaged metallurgically so it becomes brittle. But don't bend it more than once. The best way to colour temper steel springs, especially when they are small, is to use a large steel plate. For a leaf spring for a shot gun, being a standard form of spring about 3 inches long, I use a piece of ordinary mild steel plate. This plate is about 5" long, 2" wide and 1/2" thick. One face is cleand off with an angle grinder so it is all clean of scale and is shiny steel. It is essential that you dont touch the surface with your fingers, they are yucky and oily from your own skin. Place the steel across 2 bricks that support the very ends only. Now start to heat the steel with a gas torch from underneath carefully and evenly. Watch the colours forming on the surface of the steel. Stop heating just before the colour you want comes into view. You stop heating early 'cos the heat is still being transfered from the bottom of the plate. When the colour is correct and stable, place the hardened spring on the top of the steel. Watch it change colour. It cannot get any hotter than the steel plate so it is quite safe to leave it there. When it is cool, grind the plate nice and shiny again and repeat the process. Do this at least three times. All the springs I made were heated all over to the required red heat for hardening. After hardening they were carefully cleaned and polished ready for tempering. Fully hardening the spring all over is the best way to obtain a high quality spring, you should never heat a section of any spring in the middle to harden and temper it. Joe n Kody