Wednesday, February 18, 2009



Okay, so I stole these pics directly from Loco Bastardo. The tubing bender is complete, tested, and works great! Distortion/flattening on 1" pipe is (at the worst point) is .030-.040"- just enough to be barely visible if one looks (really) hard. I can live with that. I built the bender with FREE plans from The Chopper Builder's Handbook website. I obviously couldn't have done it without them. Someone there went to a lot of effort to produce these plans, and chose to give them away in support of backyard chopper builders everywhere. The plans from these guys are often ripped off and sold for $$$ on ebay and the like, so the fact that this site freely gives them away is amazing and admirable.
The aluminum die and follower you see were cast from measurements given in the plan blueprints (although CBH recommends you purchase them from JD2). The die/follower set are my first successful cast aluminum pieces (the knowledge of which I obtained mostly from this website)!
I've already 50% completed the frame jig (with plans from CBH of course), and will either build their version of a tube miter or use the tube miter program to "manually" cut the tubing with a die grinder etc.