Harbor Freight tubing bender

[hotrod]

My dad has a h.f. tubing bender that he has never used. I'm in need of a bender in a few weeks and he said I can use his. Jw if anyone has used one (its a manual bender) and how much of a pain it is to use it. Only one I've ever used was air over hydro so just wondering how hard it is to bend manually.

[blazerbrad]

It's not that hard to bend pipe with the HF version, but keep in mind I said "pipe" and not "tube". Most of the pipe dies with the HF don't match up to tube very well, the best being the 1 1/4" pipe die is pretty much identical to 1 5/8" tube.

The HF pipe bender is quite the ways off from a true mandrel tube bender, and thus can be difficult to get good bends without kinks or dents where the rollers set. A couple guys in our club have played around them with various degrees of success. Overall, I would only recommend it for certain items such as rock sliders and bumpers.

[hotrod]

Just to clear it up, This is what im talking about,



Not this,

[jfiscus]

have not used that one in the top picture, when I saw it at HF I did not think it would be up to the task or bending anything stronger than conduit piping or copper pipe. Just looks too small & flimsy to be strong enough to bend actual tube.

[hotrod]

here is the link to it

http://www.harborfreight.com/compact-bender-38470.html

[hotrod]

also found this

http://www.tjdieselperformance.com/s...-bender/Detail

[blazerbrad]

Originally Posted by hotrod

here is the link to it

http://www.harborfreight.com/compact-bender-38470.html

Wouldn't really call that a tubing bender. Look at the descpriton as it states maximum diameter of 5/8". It's more of a flat stock/bar stock bender.