I have been trying to come up with a bend gage that didn’t require me to write down a series of numbers that were carefully taken from a dial indicator. We presenly use a pencil inserted through a 6" block of wood then adjusted to find the lowest or highest points. This is pretty good and works well when doing a circle or even radiused bend. The bends I work with increase and decrease. Ideally I will have a smooth transition as the radius of the bend changes.
My idea is to insert an air brush into the sliding block with a spring loaded needle valve that changed the pattern it layed down based on how far the needle valve was depressed. Could this be done to actually lay out the current bend I have to deal with? The correct pattern would be drawn out ahead of time and the reader pattern could be compared to it.