Homemade tubing bender - Has anyone done this?

The price of nice tubing benders scares me so I've been looking at options. I found this diagram in another old HAMB post. Has anyone made and used one of these? How well does it work?

 

That will work as well as anything---the secret really is the egg shaped insert that goes inside the pipe to keep the walls from collapsing---You need enough of these to completely fill the pipe in the area where the bend will be, and some way to keep them in the correct place, so that they don't move during the bending process. The ones in professional tube bending shops are all joined together on a peice of flexible cable which runs thru the center, like beads on a string. You can also use old ball bearings if you can find the correct size to fit the inside of the tube you want to bend.---Brian

 

JD2 is the best for the money. The bender is 295 and the dies are about 300 bux per die but it is a nice piece. I have one on my Christmas list.

 

I've talked to the guy that actually made that bender back in the 60's, I wish I could remember his name (I just remembered it, it's Ellis Brasher). He was building front engine fuelers back then and said that the bender worked great. In fact, he was a whole wealth of knowledge to me a couple years ago when I started getting serious about building dragsters, he was actually doing it back then when all I could do was dream about it. Here's a car he built with the bender:

 

The one and only problem with the JD2 bender (or any production bender) is that you are limited to the radius of bend that they offer. Now, I would imagine that they may custom make you a die in whatever radius you want, but it'll cost. My problem was I wanted to bend inch and a half tubing on about a 11" or so radius, and the price of the die was really high. I wish I had just made the bender pictured above, instead I found a shop in Long Beach Cali that had the dies I was looking for and bent me some tubing (the same shop that was bending frame rails for fuelers in the 60's). For the price of having the tubing bent I could have easily made that bender.
That being said, I plan on buying a model 3 JD2 bender very soon here. They really are nice and well worth the money.

 

Here's some more info about this bender, from the original builder/designer of it:
In late '64-'65 my friend Bill Rogers inquired about building a HEMI(R) powered dragster and having built about 4-5, I already had most of the required equipment and material on hand. This first picture is of the roll cage and the bending required, but only tack welded. The car assembly requires bending all four frame members, front axle, roll bar and brace and the steering box mounting bracket. The first car I built, the tubing was hauled from CC, Tx to the Rio Grande valley for bending and it turned out looking about like exhaust tube bending. I then started think about how to make decent bends in 1.5" O.D. X .050" wall frame rail tubing and 1.625" O.D. X .125" wall roll bar and front axle tubing. Actually I always used 1¼" IPS SA-106-B steel pipe for roll bar and axle, it being 1.66" O.D. X .140" wall. I wanted the bends to be about 7" inside bend radius so I started thinking about bending it around a piece of 14 " pipe, but I knew it needed something to prevent it from collapsing/kinking. I solved the collapse/kinking problem by machining a solid steel, egg shaped object that would barely fit inside the frame or roll bar and axle tubing. It was set up on a steel welding table with a piece of 14" pipe about 4" long mounted on an axle vertical to the table so that the tubing could be secured to the 14" pipe and the 14" pipe rotated in order to cause the tubing to bend. To prevent collapsing and kinking the "egg" was welded to a 20' piece of 1/4" pipe and the "egg" inserted inside the tubing to the point where the bending occurs and the 1/4" pipe secured so the "egg" would remain where located while the tubing slides over it during bending. The entire bender was made from 4-5 pieces of scrap and was manually operated; I will draw, scan and post a sketch of the bender if anyone wants to make one, [email protected]

 

Is this some recent/current correspondence?

If so,I sure would like a copy of the scan and sketch he is offering up!

 

http://www.offroadfabnet.com/

 

I posted that drawing here about a yr ago. You should be able to click on the thumbnail for a large version and print it out. If not, go here, this is where I found it. http://www.wediditforlove.com/texasdragster.html

 

Say fellers I use to build compressoin benders and still can if I needed to. What your talking about is mandrell tube benders. If you need dies give me a hollar. 1 734 461 9474 or [email protected] . The early guys were really something the things they did to stay running. A friend of mine told me about once when they were on the road running a fuel alteredclass around 1960 they went to a drag strip and the rules had changed . They found a guy with a shop and outside his shop they raised the car up levaled it off the best they could and shortened the frame. The shop owner rewelded it, and they were able to run that weekend. I dont know if they won I'am suprized they lived. just a driver a machanic and a welder. Walk on the wilde side. Dan

 

Send him an email, I haven't talked to him in a year or so, but when I was he had lots to say about the racing scene back in the day. Plus he'll describe the bender in good detail.

 

I recently bought a Hossfeld off of Craigslist for cheap... there are dies for just about everything for it. I'm presently converting it to hydraulic.

 

Just sent one,
wanted to be sure it was cool to just e-mail him out of the blue!

Thanks!

 

How does the egg shaped object follow the curve of the bend?
do you have to pull it constantly to follow the area where the tube meets the
pipe??

I like the Idea behind that bender , but it seems a lot of work to make a bend tube...

Enlighten me

Michael

 

No, the mandrel (egg) is stationary and the tube slides over it. If you go to the link I posted above, he gives a good explaination of how it works.

 

I would like to know as well, also how does the egg not get stuck in there?

 

I had to study this picture for a minute...with the different angles going on it looks like everything would slide off that bench. Looks tilted.

 

Could you use ice instead of the steel egg? I saw some show on TV and they were making trumpets. All the tubing was filled with water and frozen before bending so it wouldn't collapse.

 

I built this one. It uses pro tools dies and the plans came from here http://gottrikes.com/Tube_Bender.htm (i slightly modified the design though.)

 

This is a good thread, keep it going.

 

That's a sweet setup. Mind if I ask how much you have tied up in it?

This morning I found a few round objects with the right diameter and cleaned off an old welding table I have. Didn't get much further than that. I need to find some better angle iron before I get serious.

 

This is very much like what the old timers in the plumbing trade did to bend lead pipe. I have an old instruction manual from the Hall that shows how they used a wood die and a wood egg with a rope through the center. As they bent the pipe they would pull the "egg" through to keep the pipe from becoming kinked.

 

The methods used in that bender are the same as used today to bend the smooth,kink free mandrel bent exhaust pipes.

It often seems that so called cutting edge, modern day tools are just ideas that are conceived years ago out of neccesity.

Thats a VERY cool bender thats simple and looks like it could be built for next to nothing if your a good scrounger! Thanks for posting it!

 

Yeah, he's a pretty cool guy. I try to get ahold of anyone that'll talk to me about drag racing back then!

 

In my oppinion....no. I would stick to something that stays solid like steel. It's actually a really good design that supposedly works really well. The egg doesn't get stuck because you are bending past the egg, once you make your bend you pull the piece out like you put it in. Krawlin, that is a very nice bender you have made, I also am curious as to how much you have invested in it, not counting the dies.

 

HA!!!!!!!!!!
Now i got it !!!!
I didn't noticed that you turn the 14" tube instead of the small tube.
Cool design.
Michael

 

Ice will work with brass, as used in trumpets, because brass is such a soft material (and very thin gauge, for trumpets). For something as heavy as steel, even light gauge steel, you need steel for the "eggs"---and you truly do have to have a whole series of these "eggs" or ball bearings, all packed closely together, covering the whole area of the pipe that is going to be bent, to keep it from collapsing as it bends. Some people claim to have good luck using highly compacted sand, but that is pretty "hit and miss"---if the pipe really does decide to colapse and flatten during the bending process, it just squeezes the damn sand into an oval shape and collapses anyways. As I said in my earlier post, in the big commercial shops that manufacture tight bends for catalytic converter downpipes, etcetera, the 'eggs" are all strung together on a flexible cable, in order to keep track of where they are positioned inside the tube being bent. I was design engineer in the catalytic converter department at Volkswagen of Canada, and spent a fair bit of time at our tubing benders shop in Toronto, watching their tube bending machinery work.

 

I've bent hundreds of feet of DOM, Moly, and ERW without "eggs" and without any collapse of the tube worth worrying about. I bought a bender from AllStar in Niles MI many years ago. Still good today when I need it. It uses a bottle jack for hydraulic force. Simple and very effective. Back in the early 90s it set me back around $275. I do oil or grease the tube where it meets the die. Might help?

 

A mandrel bender is certainly ideal for bending thin wall tubing such as exhaust tubing. However, for heavier wall roll bar tubing, a bender such as Krawlin built works very good as the precision die captures the tube and keeps it from collapsing. FWIW- most pro roll cage builders, using this type bender, will use tubing the next thickness above what the rules require. If the rules call for .120 wall min. they will go to .134 wall. The reason being; as the tube bends it stretches and thins out, therefore, leaving the bend at less than .120 wall. Here's a link to free drawings to build a rotary draw type bender in the manner of the one shown above. http://www.pro-tools.com/pdf/hmp-200-new.pdf

 

That gizmo from Pro-Tools is probably O.K. if all you wish to bend is 90 degrees or less. It wouldn't serve my needs. I've been bending tubing with a No. 2 Hossfeld for 30 years and it always does a great job providing I use it for what it is designed to do. Every sprint car manufacturer whose shop I have visited over the years (and that's quite a few) uses the same bender I have.

I did a cage in my partner's '39 Overland from 1 5/8" X .134" wall DOM (passed NHRA tech.) using a JD2 hydraulic bender and I hated that thing. It made me calculate the length of material used for every bend because it had me bending shapes from the ends and towards the center. The Hossfeld works the opposite....you work from the center out. It's MUCH easier....no math necessary.

Come and get my extra Hossfeld No. 2 manual bender (exactly the same as in photo) for $400.00 or B.O.....I won't ship it.