Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Roper whitney combination brake

I know everyone here would rather discuss who's the most cantankerous, who remembers walking to school in the snow, up hill both ways, "should I buy a tan glock or a black glock?". "Is juicy smollet an obama sex toy?", "blah, blah, blah...


Here's something entirely different that very few of you will be interested in but here it is for the one or 2 guys that might like this sort of thing.


I've been looking for one of these old brakes for several years now. This one popped up on a sell n swap site about 350 miles from me, I hooked up the trailer and headed that way.



the seller had a large skid loader, it was barely enough to lift the 2800 lb brake onto the trailer. When I got it home we backed the trailer in between my 2 post hoist, rigged it up, lifted and drove the trailer out.



We set it down on a makeshift dolly system using a set of go jack type of car movers and some 3" tubing. Rolled it out the back of the shop where we do our sand blasting.



Started sandblasting.



Epoxy primer

Then I had some left over single stage urethane automotive paints that I mixed together in my best attempt at a roper whitney blue/green.

I used a BMW blue, a ford silver and an old 90's polaris snowmobile color called black sapphire.

This is an 8 ft 14 gauge combination brake. The lower leaf is drawn upwards rather than the top being drawn down. The top leaf is mounted in huge dovetail rails and can be drawn back as much as 8"! The nose bar can be fit with radiused nose bars for radius bending. It also accepts segmented fingers that can clamp on, converting the straight brake to a box and pan. So, crisp tight bending, flatten seams, jointing, reverse bends, radius bends, box n pan... that's why they called it the combination brake.

Granted I don't have the segmented fingers (yet) but I will be looking for some.

Thats cool.

14 guage!

That sure looks good Sir David. How thick steel will that bend?

You’re going to be able to make some clean stuff with that. I know you’re excited. Can I ask what you paid for It?

$2500

I still prefer the rustic look of heat n beat.....or cut n weld.

Kinda like hammered copper.....

Very nice but what does that have to do with the Mueller report?

This^^^ Or the McCains backing double-barrel Joe?

I'm somewhat cornfust I must say

ND, I have no idea what that is or what it really does, but I admire your abilities and enjoy your show-and-tell pic’s.

Pretty cool; Dave.

You can do some major tin smithing with that old girl.

Flash backs to metal shop in high school

stuff like this.





grab the handle, swing it back to open the jaws.





position your work piece and close the jaws

swing the bottom leaf to fold the piece.

fold it past 90 if you like, this will single bend to 135 degrees



Unclamp and place the piece between the nose bar and bottom leaf to close to a seam.

How did you do that kind of work before you bought it Sir David?

That thing is a beast. What a cool way to work on classics!

Great combo tool! You don't see those every day! Congrats!!