good bender for 1" square tubing?

[daniel_buck]

So I've been tossing around the idea of trying out bending 1" square tubing (which is what I use to make furniture) and I have a piece coming up that is going to need some bends. I'll need the bends to be fairly repeatable, or at least a good way to gauge what degree the bend is at. For example a hexagon with rounded corners, each corner will need to be the same, 60 degrees (I think, haha).

So, I don't want to get a bender that will be over kill, I won't be wanting to use this for anything heavy duty like roll cages, or anything like that. I'd say it will probably ONLY be used for 1" square tubing, nothing larger. Possibly 3/4" or 1/2" square tubing down the road, but nothing larger.

Any suggestions? I don't have a lot of space, so I'd want something somewhat portable. And I'd rather not spend to much money. If I could get a decent bender with the single 1" square tubing die set for less than $200, I'd be ok with that if it's not going to be a piece of junk that I hate using.

[dr.dirty]

I had a 1 inch square die for my JD2 and worked great..... I was bending .120 with one hand making cargo baskets and such. but it a bit out of your desired price range

[dr.dirty]

what about something like this?


http://www.ebay.com/itm/1-3-BENCH-DI...605#vi-content

[inVERt'D]

I recently bought some bender plans for $20 ( I posted the link to your main thread, IIRC ). You could probably build it for about $200, but you still wouldn't have any dies. I just happened to be thinking of bending square tubing the other day. It would be relatively easy to make dies for bending thin-wall, square or rect tubing, since the sides of the die ( needed to keep the sides of the tubing from buckling ) just go straight up. You need a cylinder, so could start with a short piece of pipe or tube or round stock or a steel wheel of whatever size, depending on the desired radius. You make the sides out of some plate (sheet) steel cut into circles and welded to the cylinder. The sides don't necessarily have to be circles, but circles are clean and clear things nicely.

If you're sure you'd just need one radius and one tubing cross-section, you could build a simple bender around the die, so to speak, and save yourself a lot of trouble and hole drilling.

Just some redneck input.

[Ol Man]

So, I don't want to get a bender that will be over kill, I won't be wanting to use this for anything heavy duty like roll cages, or anything like that. I'd say it will probably ONLY be used for 1" square tubing, nothing larger. Possibly 3/4" or 1/2" square tubing down the road, but nothing larger.

We'll probably have to come back to revisit this thread sometime in the future......it seems like you get deeper and deeper into this four wheeling/modifying stuff.

[daniel_buck]

Rich, you are probably right! haha!

I have read alot of good things about the JD2 benders, we'll see, if I put some overtime in this next few weeks, maybe I'll just go that route. By all accounts, the JD2 benders are very good.

[aw12345]

For now make a home built set of dies for your harbor freight press

[inVERt'D]

For now make a home built set of dies for your harbor freight press

Now that's a good idea!

[daniel_buck]

For now make a home built set of dies for your harbor freight press

I was wondering about that, some way I could use the existing press. any ideas?

[aw12345]

you try your hand at making dies to bend the square tube. The press will do the bending. You could built dies out of some tube, flat stock and plate. worth a try. Would probably cost less than 50 bucks in material. You just have to figure out the radius of the center die

[daniel_buck]

I need to pick up some square tubing for a project, I'll see if they have any scrap large diameter round tubing at M&K that I might be able to use for some dies. I've been itching to find new uses for the 20ton press. I've already bent some sheet metal and flat bar, and squished a few beer cans to 1mm thick. haha If I could bend square tubing nicely, that would be sweet!

[daniel_buck]

So if I were to go with a bender like the JD2 which uses manual force (not hydraulic that pushes on itself), I'd have to secure it pretty good somehow.

There's enough room in the back of my garage where the work bench is, to allow me to work on longer pieces of tube. So I'd have to mount it outside the garage I think.

I don't know that I'd like to start drilling into the concrete, not sure my landlord would like that.

Maybe mounting it onto the front bumper of either the TJ or the Willys might be the best solution?


I've got a spare bottle jack, maybe I should look at making (or modifying a cheap bender) so that it wouldn't need to be bolted to the floor. With the limited space that I have, I can't afford to have anything permanently mounted anywhere, haha!

[inVERt'D]

For portability I don't think you could beat a vertical hydraulic bender. You could put it on steel casters instead of redheads.

[Ol Man]

This guy is on Pirate

https://www.roguefab.com/product.php?id=2