bending question

[LostIt]

Has anyone ever used a jd2 or similar bender to bend pipe? I was looking at the the jd2 site and saw they had dies to bend sch 40. Has anyone ever used one of these? I have a tube bender as well as a hf pipe bender. I like how clean and kink free the tube bender bends tubing, but sometimes I have projects that pipe would work well for, and its readily available and cheap versus the tubing, so I use the HF bender with varied results. Sometimes it comes out okay, but for the most part I'm not happy with it. So has anyone tried this, and what were you're results? Searching yields basically the same old pipe vs tubing arguements, and alot of stuff about the HF bender, including trying to bend tubing with it, but very little about using the tube bender for bending pipe.

BTW, I don't want this to turn into a pipe vs tube arguement, and I understand you can pack the pipe with sand on the hf bender to get better bends.

[TheBandit]

Appropriately sized pipe dies are available from both Pro Tools and JD Squared which should make excellent bends in pipe. If you want to use a tube die to bend pipe, choose a size close to your pipe OD and cross your fingers.

[dcmsu]

I have a JD2 model 3 bender with a die for 1 5/8" tubing...which is almost identical in OD as 1 1/4" schedule 40. I have bent quite a bit of both with the one die. The pipe is cheaper and works good for things that aren't a rollcage. The OD (and ID for that matter) of pipe does tend to vary a lot more than quality DOM or HREW tubing however.

Dan

[Todd W]

Do you do a lot of elaborate stuff where you need multiple bends w/pipe? You could get a lot of 90* pre-bent pipe an use that, cut it shorter to go for different angles etc.. Cheaper, easier, and probably faster.

[fabcam]

Both the JD2 and the Pro-Tools benders will give you good looking bends with pipe.

[LostIt]

Cool, thanks for all the info. As for the prebent stuff, I never really liked that method. And yes, I have some plans to build a few things that will require multiple, somewhat complicated bends. Another reason I was thinking about getting a pipe die for my bender is so I can do projects for othe people. I'm a college student, and over the last couple of years I've collected a pretty decent collection of tools and I have a little shop set up in my garage. Because of this I have many of my fellow club members and fellow students asking for help, or to use my tools for thier projects. Many of them would like to build things like rock sliders and bumpers with the bender, but tubing is expensive and somewhat hard to come by. Pipe meanwhile is easily available, and works well for those kinda projects. For me the die is a somewhat expensive investment, but I'll make it back in traded parts, labor, money and of course cold beverages