Welding Tips and Tricks

I'm learning MIG welding with a small hobart 120 and am mostly farting around with some scrap parts and making some simple projects to learn different aspects. I see people making little creative figures and sculptures out of miscellaneous bolts, nuts and such. When making these things, how would I bend those pieces into shape? I have a standard small propane torch, bench vise with anvil and lots of elbow grease. Is it a matter of heat it up and muscle it into the shape you want? or is there a trick that'll save me some sweating and swearing but doesn't involve a $200 tool?

You can bend a lot of stuff with the tools you have especially with small peices. I've bent 1/8" strips of steel by hand in a vise to make parts. Vise and vise grips along with a propane torch will do you pretty good. A hammer may be needed at times as well.

Make the tools you need,all kinds of ideas an plans on the web,if you hAve a welder an the ability to cut stuff,you can make what you need,or buy it,somewhere on here I posted a square tube bender,that I built because I had no way of doing it,it worked great

Put some heat to it and you might be surprised how soft steel gets when its red hot, and how easy it is to get it there, weather with a oxy torch, or throwing it in a wood fire for a few minutes. Both of my grandfathers in montana shod horses, and worked iron with little more than a fire made of cow dung, ironworking goes back many centuries, ya just gotta get some heat to it. Or more leverage if its cold.