Joined: Jan 2010
Posts: 9,811
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From: Northern California
Bikes: Cheltenham-Pedersen racer, Boulder F/S Paris-Roubaix, Varsity racer, '52 Christophe, '62 Continental, '92 Merckx, '75 Limongi, '76 Presto, '72 Gitane SC, '71 Schwinn SS, etc.
This^^^^^, you need to determine what is bent before effecting any corrections.
Especially if the small ring is still running true, then the big ring itself is almost certainly the culprit.
Bending metal is a practiced art, one has to have a feel for how and where the metal tends to flex and at what point it bends/yields in a way that doesn't just spring back.
It gets trickier yet when bending frame tubing, which has a buckling mode looming wherever/whenever the tubing is near the yield point.
So it's always good to approach the force needed for bending very gradually, perhaps ten or more times so as not to over-correct. Minor corrections of excess corrective bending are not problematical, and actually serve to stress-relieve the metal into more-stable dimensions, but gross over-corrections can result in unusable parts or can damage adjacent parts of the structure/assembly.