How to bend tubing

Step 4: Ready to bend

Here, you can see that I take a piece of scrap (from the earlier cut) and attach it to the table to complete the jig.

You will want to bend from one side only while ensuring the tubing is supported wile bending. While bending, try to keep the pressure against the jig instead of the tubing.

You may want to practice with some cheap amluminum conduit to get the hang of it. When you are ready, get the polished stuff.

Have fun.

Comments

[jcmaner]

if you fill the conduit with sand it will not kink

[ehmbee]

+1 on filling with sand-it appears in old school DIY magazines I have.

[Evox_Rider]

I have been looking for alternatives to buying conduit benders (they are not cheap...and I am...lol).  Would doing a jig like this, but for a small 3 or 4 inch radius work for 1/2" conduit? or would it kink?

[GreyBird]

I use a spring to bent PVC Conduit. For long pipes I attach a rope on the one end and shove it down the pvc until it is in place. My spring was inexpensive. Hope this helps.

[PaulE]

 I think it should work ok.

Just pull very hard and go slow. You keep the conduit very tight against the jig.

[Evox_Rider]

 I was thinking if it does kink, to try and make a groove in the edge of the half circle part to match the conduit (thinking to maybe mount the full circle into the drill press and use it as a makeshift lathe)

[Scott Dallesasse]

How about just going and buying the right size conduit bender?

[Paulcet]

Conduit benders are fixed-radius, but with the wood form it can be any radius you want, even varying radius.

[DiamondBack]

a conduit bender bends pipe. While you can get aluminum pipe, this how-to talks about bending tubing. If you were to attempt to bend tubing in a pipe bender, you would end up putting a serious kink in the tubing - rendering it unattractive, and useless But, doing this rail WITH conduit, and the conduit bender, might be a viable alternative. Polish it up with 2-3 grades of emery cloth, and it could look quite attractive

[PaulE]

If I were doing more than one little thing, I would wholeheartedly agree. However, the bow rail only required 3 bends in one piece of tubing. Using scraps in the garage seemed the way to go.

[bethehammer]

Add a torch and this is a good way to bend steel tubing/pipe also...

[Reaper]

Great little compression bender there. As others have mentioned, packing sand in the middle of the tube will help reduce deformation. Freezing water in aluminium won't! The other big thing to a good job is get a bending grade of aluminium. The difference is in the alloy and the temper - some bends better than others, check with your aluminium supplier, they should be able to point you in the right direction.

[Trunin]

Another great way to bend the tube is to fill it with sand. (Make sure that you have a good fill with no air pockets) Cap the ends and you can bend all day with no kinks. You can do the same thing with water, however even a small air bubble will allow the tube to fail.