Have just bought the above and it suggests cutting some chipboard (or similar) to a radius, screwing it to a sheet of wood and screwing some 1x2 along side it to make something similar to the image below. Apparently you can then bend steel tube with it.

Has anyone tried this and if so, what degree of success have you enjoyed?


Cheers,

Chris.
Rescued attachment pipe_bending.jpg

It does work.

But sometimes you need to heat the metal, then it proves a problem.

We used radiused wood/metal in the vice and got the same effect - and vices dont burn! (Well, proper one's don't!)

the tube I've got is 16 swg. Do you think that'll be fine enough?

You could try a plumbers pipe bender.
The one I've got bends 1/2 and 3/4 inch copper pipe - I guess it could just about cope with steel.
If you hired a big one, you could wear out their one instead of youre own

Hi All,

If you bend pipe around a flat former it tends to flatten out, ending up oval instead of round. 25 o/d will end up 28 x 22 ish.
With thin wall pipe it is also posible the inside of the bend will "ripple".
With propper pipe formers the pipe sits in a "U" which stops the pipe from doing this.

The formers plumbers use are for 15 and 22 o/d. Not all that useful for Locosters.

I bent my wishbones from nominal bore pipe, the stuff you can thread BSP.
I used 1/2" nb, sch 10, (22.2 o/d x 2mm wall) 304 stainless using a 1/2" nb former, but they still ended up 1mm out of round.
The hoops at the back of my chassis I made from box section, fabricating the bends.

Paul G

The 22mm former bends 19mm steel without too much trouble, I've used it a few times. Just put an extension on the handle and hold the bender in a vice. If you only use it for the rear hoop like I did you will be covering the tube with your aluminium anyway.

Cheers guys. Will give it a go becsuse it's cheap. If that doesn't work I'll be off to the Plumb Centre.

i saw a bender in my local focus do it all

(ooh ahh missus)

it was 49 quid.

bit expensive for an experiment.......

im sure you can hire something

atb

steve

have seen them in the past for about £20, but they're prolly not up to much. Have a contact in the tool hire trade so that's prolly the best option. Cheers.

Try your local Car Boot Sale, I often see them at my local one.

Try Loot, Local Freeads paper, Ebay, NuTool in Doncaster, etc etc.


Regards

Geoffw

Tried method shown at the begining of this discussion to bend the round tube that goes around the 'boot' opening.

Several points to note:

It was done cold but did tend to spring open slightly so I had to make the angle slightly tighter than 90.

It does make the tube slightly oval but not significantly for most purposes.

Any slight twisting whilst bending caused it to spring out of the former which was inconvenient. I ended up taking the top block off, drilling the tube and screwing it to the former (filling the screw holes with weld after). Worked fine.

Phil

Had intended to give it a go over the weekend, but didn't get round to it. Will definately have a go this weekend as I'm dying to get the chassis done and oiled before the weather gets any worse. Cheers for the pointers.