Harbor Freight tubing bender
 

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.

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.

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

http://i472.photobucket.com/albums/r...tubebender.jpg

Not this,

http://i472.photobucket.com/albums/r...pipebender.jpg

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.

here is the link to it

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

also found this

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

That type of bender is for bending solid round, square or flat stock, not hollow tubing. There is no Die or Follower to keep the tubing round when you bend it. I have never seen it successful on anything other that flat or round or square solid stock.

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.

I just sold one of those the other week. I had it for over 10 years someone gave it to me I never used it. I could do about anything it could do other ways.