tubing bender Q

I was wondering if anyone had the Harbor Freight tubing bender?

I am looking at the one that mounts to a bench top, about 50 bucks.


Will it bend a piece of 1" square tubing in a radius curve, for the corners of a roof rack?

They dont sell any "tubing benders".They have pipe benders and what I think your talking about which is for solid stock(wrought iron work).I have the least inexpensive bender,the JD2,it runs about $260 for the bender and $100-300 for each set of dies!

I have the JD3 and you can buy square tube dies for it but be ready to spend about $650.00 for the bender and 1 Die set

"JD" benders are some of the best, but are also very expensive to get setup (dies, hydro's, etc..). Habor freight benders are as said "pipe" benders. Don't get me wrong, they WILL work on tube but not nearly as nice of bends. To use for roof rack, etc. they will work fine. I would go with the 12 or 16 ton rather then the table top. They seem to be a bit under rated. The 16T will run you around $200. Although people do , I wouldn't recommend bending a cage with it. She will not look pretty and the bends are not nearly as strong as you would get using a manderal bender.
To sum it up if you are wanting a inexpensive bender for the rack then go for it but buy one of the large ones.

The reason the Harbor Freight benders don't work so well on tubing is that they are, as noted, "pipe" benders. Pipe is sized according to indise diameter. "Tubing" is sized according to outside diameter. That means that a set of dies for "pipe" don't fit tubing very well.

The Harbor Freight benders don't include (as far as I know) any dies for square tubing (actually, no dies for any "tubing"), so you're likely to collapse the sidewalls trying to bend square stock.

Fullsizexj said:

I have the JD3 and you can buy square tube dies for it but be ready to spend about $650.00 for the bender and 1 Die set

Click to expand...

Mine is made by "JD2",its is a "model 3".
Tubing is typically much thinner and will kink easily without the proper dies(especially square tube).

I am a newbie to the fab world but I wouldn't build anything "important" like rockers, bumpers, cages, with tubing bent with the harbor freight stuff.......price looks appealing but the "word" is that the bends are relatively weak when compared to what you'd get using a proper tubing bender. Check out www.pro-tools.com

Thank you all!

I was mostly interested in it, cause the price fit nicely in the tool budget. But if it won't bend the square tubing for a roof rack, it isn't worth the cash.