I want to make some pannier rails for my bike and am looking to borrow for a weekend a pipe bender. The pipe I an bending is the standard 19mm by 2mm wall used to make pannier racks with. Anybody local to Torbay got anything I could borrow? Thanks :)
Your standard plumbers pipe bender will do half a job / probably need a extra bit of bar on handle for last bit of bend!
The issue will be tube collapsing on corners, need to be tight for back frames.
Need to fill with sand (tight, rammed in), close ends, usually braze, and then bend, cut off excess, then final weld.
If you havent done it before, practise on some scrap, it aint as easy as you think to get a consistent tidy bend.
You might need to heat gently on bend, upto dull red, to prevent tube splitting on outside.
Let us know how you get on, its a little project that a lot of us have tried once or twice - limited success in my case, useable but not the prettiest.
Thanks for the replies, years ago (20+) I use to be a fabricator welder. Could do it then but I might have got soft in my old age :) I am keen to have a go. I had considered a plumbers pipe bender but they are 22mm not 3/4 inch so the former id wrong and it might buckle the pipe or not give me a smooth curve. So ideally I an looking for one of these to borrow. However a heavy duty plumbers pipe bender some thing like this would do it.
