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I was wondering what other people use to heat their home made bending iron with? I don't really want to use propane. I have one that I built and I used cone shaped electric heating elements, but these elements don't seem to last very long before they start to degrade and stop working.

After bending my sides on my newly made fox style side bender I realized that I hadn't built any compensation in my form so there was a signifigant amount of touch up bending I needed to do on my iron. I pulled out my iron and discovered it didn't work. I got around this by wrapping my heating blanket around my pipe, but I don't think this was very good for my blanket and don't want to do it that way again.

I've looked online and seen some coiled water heating elements, but I'm not sure how well these will work. I'd really like to buy the LMI or Stewmac iron, but they are quite expensive and my credit card is already screaming for mercy.

On a possitive note my sides turned out really well. I like the combination of fox bender/bending iron.

Thanks guys(and gals if we have any?)!

Graham,

I cobbled together my own bending iron setup. For the heating element, I used an electric charcoal fire starter. It's a narrow hoop attached to a handle. I bent it in a vise (squeezed it together) to the point where I could shove it up inside of a piece of 2" pipe. To control the temperature, I used a dimmer switch and mounted it with an electrical receptical in a junction box. I then mounted an over thermometer to the front of the unit. Here's a photo:



After this, I found that I needed an extension for tighter bends. At first I tried using a reducer from 2" to 3/4" pipe, but the reducer added a lot of mass to the bender and moved the 3/4" nipple out far enough where it too way too long to heat up. So, instead, I drilled a hole through the top of the 2" pipe and through the 3/4" nipple and mounted it to the top inside of the pipe. I lost the thermometer when I did that, but I had already scribed a couple of lines on the dimmer switch plate so I knew where a couple of temp settings were -- the two I used most often (280F and 300F).

Best,

Michael

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Michael,

Thanks for the idea. That's just what I wanted, but I couldn't make my brain come up with it.

I used to use a blow torch but now just stick a heat gun in the end, what a difference it makes.