Tube bending How-To's from the EAA archives...

[Steve]

http://www.contactmagazine.com/EXPERIMENTER/19Aug09/SA-8-1983.html

 Thank You, Contact Magazine!

[Murray Randall]

Yeah you can use some pretty sophisticated tooling to bend the emp tubes.   In my big airplane life before Eagle, I carefully heated and formed steel tubing around a wood form that always caught fire.   But the Eagle emp tubes can be done manually pulling/pushing around some 1/2-3/4 blocks.   I had some 1/2" alum plates but soft woods work also.

[Sam Buchanan]

Or a 5-gal plastic bucket:

[ParQld]

Hey Sam, I do like the B.U.C.K.E.T method, do you think this would work on a DE which is Chrome Molly or would you get tube collapse ?, In the video Leonard just uses a hole in the bench. just wondering if forming around a bucket might work

cheers Paul

[scottiniowa]

The Radius of a  bend almost always determines how much leverage you will need  ( you couldn't bend a 1' long tube very easily  around a 6" radius block by hand)
 By having a much longer piece of tubing you gain the needed leverage when using various radius blocks. The tighter the radius the apt to kink/bend incorrect if you don't have shaped blocks.     i.e. - buckets, soft woods, holes in tables.   But for large radius bends these can work nicely.

I don't know if it is in the report, but many times you can mount a very inexpensive EMT bender in a vice, and get some very nice bends.  (using the leverage of your longer tube) A gentle hand helps. And as Leonard shows, very gentle bends at many stations ( every1/8" or similar) 

Best of success!

[Sam Buchanan]

Hey Sam, I do like the B.U.C.K.E.T method, do you think this would work on a DE which is Chrome Molly or would you get tube collapse ?, In the video Leonard just uses a hole in the bench. just wondering if forming around a bucket might work

cheers Paul

I only know of one way to find the answer to your question....