Pipe benders

Personally, I would start with the better of the HF units and then start modifying and upgrading it.

The HF bender that lies down flat is a very usable machine. Here you can see some pictures of us making a very simple pipe handrail from 1-1/4":

I used the machine stock-standard except I took the die and very carefully measured it and painted a thin white line on it to indicate the centerline of the bend. I can now lay out a bend centerline on the pipe and line it up by eye easily within 1/16", probably much closer.

BTW I paid $20 for my bender used. Lots of these show up used cheap on craigslist.

Grant Erwin Kirkland, Washington

pretty nice work grant. i got a jb2 bender and found it's a bitch to keep the bends in the same plane. looks like you did pretty good w/ that (especially with such a long run!)

b.w.

Thanks, Bill. I was able to keep the bends reasonably planar by shimming up the pipe so it was everywhere parallel to the floor. As I bent the pipe Karen would scoot over the shims. On other railing jobs when I've done two bends they didn't come out planar and so I had to cut the pipe in the middle and rotate one end and weld it back up. Even that isn't too hard. - GWE

--Check out these guys:

I bought the model 3 manual, then added my own hydraulics to it. Very nice and best of all the die sets won't break the bank..