Bending .250 wall Tube

Black Bear

Black Bear

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Mar 21, 2005
Location
Raleigh, NC
Im looking for some tips and tricks to bend 1.5 OD .250 wall DOM tubing. I have a tube bender (jd2 i think) do not have a torch. How have yall been bending this stuff?
 
Pipe bender from hf. You are welcome to come borrow mine....
 
I used a torch for most of mine.

However, I have also bent .250 wall DOM on my jd2 without heat, just the bender. I only needed 45* which worked out great cause thats all the bender had in it, 45*
 
When Demon Offroad was open we built a trac bar on a pro tools bender out of .250 wall, no heat, took a long extension on the handle and two people trying thier best to get a hernia (sp?) to get the bend in it. Torches are your friend. If you can't borrow a torch the pipe bender would do.
 
If you don't have a torch a Mapp gas bottle and a Bernz-O-Matic igniter/nozzle will get you some heat for about $20.00. It's enough to get steel red but it takes a while.
Home Depot and Lowes have them
 
I bend .250 all the time with my pro tools. It fortunately has an air over hydraulic setup though. I've bent quite a bit over 90 deg. no problems. A friend of mine uses the same bender without hydraulics and he says its work but it'll do it. I don't know how much I'd like to keep doing it because I've noticed that the holes in the die are starting to oval.
 
Finally got to the point to bend the .250 wall tube. I didnt want to mess up the bender, and I didnt have a torch, or mapp gas, but I had some charcoal. I used a 4'x4' sheet of 3/16ths, 4 cinder blocks, and some expanded metal. I used 2 blocks to raise the 3/16ths off the ground ( ididnt want to kill the grass), and used the other 2 to raise expanded metal above that. Put the charcoal on the expanded metal, lit it, and waited. It took about 45 min to get the tube cherry red, and it bent like butter.
 
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