Bending Steel pipe...Old School

Mad Dog_2

My buddy's Father, Jimmy Schubert Sr. was a great, Unlicensed plumber and also a big car guy.  He used to take me out at night and weekends when I was a First Year Local #2 Apprentice. He barely used power tools.  Core drill a hole for a toilet waste??  Nah..Sledge hammer...Main sewer stoppage?  Electric Eel??  Nah..3/8" x 6 foot snap together rods with A Tee Handle and Attachable heads...Gas leak...break out the matches...He was a tough guy from Queens but his work was super neat!  

I remember him telling me they would bend pipe by filling it with sand and heating them with torches.  I know pipe benders have been around a long time.  I bet someone here..Hot 🔥 Rod, Ed Bratt, Ed, did this or saw it done as a kid.  Mad Dog 

jesmed1

Mad Dog_2 said:

My buddy's Father, JimI remember him telling me they would bend pipe by filling it with sand and heating them with torches.  I know pipe benders have been around a long time.  I bet someone here..Hot 🔥 Rod, Ed Bratt, Ed, did this or saw it done as a kid.

I recently had to bend some PVC electrical conduit into a U-shape and remembered the sand-and-heat trick from somewhere. Filled a short section of conduit with sand and heated gently with a heat gun. Worked perfectly to make a nice 180 without any flattening.

STEVEusaPA

I wish I took a picture of one at a customer's house. 1 1/2" steel pipe steam return in the basement, under the one turret portion of the house. 15' semi circle along the wall. The other turret on the other end of the house was replaced by a plumber, using copper and 1/8 bends...ugly.

Mad Dog_2

The Deadmen had Golden Hands  ✋.  Mad Dog 🐕 

Big Ed_4

There is a pipe bender jig on Ridgid pipe vice to bend small pipe no sand good for a tweak . With a bend like that they used heat and small diameter pipe . Saved them some cuts . Crooked thread on 1 1/4" was another off set that the guys used .

JUGHNE

I have a Greenlee hydraulic bender which will bend perfect 90's or less in 1/2" up to 2" Sch 40 rigid steel/iron pipe.

I used it mostly for 1 1/4" IPS UG NG pipe.

Glad to pass it on to someone for less than 1/10 cost of new kit.

Mad Dog_2

I have Ridgid Ratchet Benders for 1/2" & 3/4" L & K Copper.  Inspectors sometimes question the neat bends but as long as its L, its good to go.  Does anyone Remember the Holesclaw Benders used on BT (Bendable copper) ?  I got a few in the Barn.  Bending is an art and alot of fun.  There's nothing like an IBEW Journeyman Electrician who is a master at bending.  Mad Dog 🐕 
...

hot_rod

I have a REMS Curvo bender that will do any tube up to 1-3/8 od
Hard copper up to 1-1/4

Zero pressure drop in bent tubing if it is 8d or more. So 1” tube would be an 8” radius bend.

I think plumbing code books have a section on bending and required wall thickness,

I bend white and grey PVC with some heat, never filed it with sand?

Greenlee tool used to gave a roller machine that heated Electrical PVC to make bends and offsets

A supplier in Souther Illinois has this nice homemade copper bender. They bent the tube used for radiant ceiling heat grids, all around the Midwest, many Chicago jobs
 They still have grid paperwork dating back to the 1960s and can reproduce the entire job!  Straight lengths of 1/2” type L

STEVEusaPA

I’ve been playing with my Rothenberger 4000e bender. Even made a calculator to figure out the bends quickly.

EdTheHeaterMan

Everyone knows that all you need is

To bend steel in his bare hands

EBEBRATT-Ed

If you find a 1940s-50s house it used to be quite common to bend the (usually 1/2 copper) for the water lines.

I have seen plenty of bent steel pipe but no one wants to do that any more. Electrical conduit is bent all the time of course.

Heat gun works well on PVC as others have mentioned.


When I started in 73 my boss was an old timer who came over from Nova Scotia in the 20s to work on ammonia ice house refrigeration.

He was about 65 when I started

He had stories about threading 2" steel pipe by hand for weeks at a time in the 40s because they were too cheap to buy a pipe machine and labor was probably $2.00/hour or less. he said they would smash up a

concrete floor instead of running pipe around the permitter just to save on elbows and pipe.

Steamhead

EdTheHeaterMan said:

Everyone knows that all you need is

To bend steel in his bare hands

Or this guy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bender_(Futurama)

Mad Dog_2

Love that story about your Nova Scotia Mechanic.  As a second  year apprentice on the notorious  Rikers Island Jail, I cut and thread 2" Galvanized by hand for months for my foreman Joey D (RIP).  He wanted me to "learn the old fashioned way."  He let me solder all the 2" Copper we (I) was  running
Underneath the crawl spaces.  He showed me how to bend pipe & threaded rod.  

When I really fell in love with bending was the first time Walked in to a Mechanical room in the Rock Center High Rises that were built in the 1920s & 1930s.  They had perfectly gorgeous small diameter copper tubing with tight little curls & bends on the Pneumatic controls...an Elaborate maze of multiple, perfectly symmetrical and equidistant rows of tubing.  Our United Association Local #2 two had a Thermostatic division and this is all they did. As this got phased out, they had to relearn plumbing, just to get a job.  Today, there are like 5 guys that do it  still.  Father & Son only like 2 families.  Mad Dog 🐕 

ChrisJ

We've bent up to 3" sch40 stainless pipe at the shop but it wasn't fun.

We do bend 1 1/4" sch40 all the time though and have a portable machine for it as well as a roll former.

realliveplumber

We use the holsclaw handy bender all of the time for 1/2" copper. Perfect bend, no kinks or rippled corners.

We regularly use soldered copper on our jobs, the bender is great for when you have to hop up over , or under, a pipe to run a branch.

We also bend super long turn 90s, which are great if you are in a tight spot when going through a bottom plate, and there is a joist in the way and you cant get the torch in there safely. Drill two 1 1/4" holes, and slide the elbow right through.

ChrisJ

realliveplumber said:

We use the holsclaw handy bender all of the time for 1/2" copper. Perfect bend, no kinks or rippled corners. We regularly use soldered copper on our jobs, the bender is great for when you have to hop up over , or under, a pipe to run a branch. We also bend super long turn 90s, which are great if you are in a tight spot when going through a bottom plate, and there is a joist in the way and you cant get the torch in there safely. Drill two 1 1/4" holes, and slide the elbow right through.

For small copper I use a yellowjacket crossbow bender.

It's only for soft copper though but works with type K up to 3/4 ID.

PC7060

This unusual shower curtain rod is in a my 100 yo house.  Its made of 3/4” sch 40 iron pipe and the bend work is beautiful. I think it was added in the 1950s or 1960s.  I had it sandblasted and powder coated during renovation.  

Works great and def won’t pull off wall!

hot_rod

There is a group of hydronic guys on Instagram that are into copper bending.

REMS makes a cordless version of the Curvo. Grammers love cordless tools

Many of the power tool companies are embracing the SM influencers, these days.

Mad Dog_2

My coolest one was a 10 foot length of 1/2 " Copper to a Huge steam boiler in the Gold Coast Mansion & Estate of The Grace Shipping Family .  It has like 6 bends on it.  It took me year to get that good. No kicks, funky bends or wows. Mad Dog 🐕