I purchased a set of plans from Frank Takacs at www.gottrikes.com for an air over hydraulic tubing bender. This bender is very popular at www.pirate4x4.com and other sites.
The plans come with options – a simple version, or a more complex version that has neat things like wheels, and the ability to hold the arms whilst changing dies. I went all out and blinged it up, baby. Yeah.
I read the plans a few times to really understand what I was doing, and it went together fine. It was a LOT more work than I anticipated.
I purchased all the steel locally, and only screwed up the arms once. I used tractor pins from www.princessauto.com, and machined longer pins that I could not buy locally.
Harbor Freight (the recommended source for the Air/Hydraulic ram) neither ships to Canada, nor recognizes Canada as a billable destination. Too bad for them. I ordered a ram from www.northerntool.com, and had it shipped to a receiving company in the states so I could bring it across the border myself.
I also ordered a 1-1/2″ 240° die from www.pro-tools.com. They ship free within the US, so I picked that up at the same time as the ram.
The fancier version of the bender required a 1-3/8″ hole to be drilled. I did not have one, couldn’t justify purchasing one, and didn’t trust the accuracy of a hole-saw, so I fabricated a “boring bar” of sorts to mount in my lathe, and drilled it that way.
The entire bender was TIG welded together, because I’m a masochist. Well, that and it’s good practice for me. I’m getting better at TIG.
I painted the bender Tremclad Orange. When spraying Tremclad, you have a “re-coat” time window that does not work if you’re spraying the top AND the bottom. The paint takes longer to cure than you have time to re-coat, and the subsequent coats wrinkle instantly. This was a horrific disappointment, requiring some significant parts to be sanded down and re-coated. I am still not impressed.
It turned out fine, and I have to remind myself that it’s just a tool.
I practice-bent electrical conduit to get the feel for the machine and performing compound bends before I ruined the stick of DOM tube I had bought for the Lotus chassis. An expensive mistake. *sigh*
Added because I can never remember: It cost me $540CDN to build it, plus one die, back in 2010.