Show us your home made tools
Now that's cool. I don't know how many times I've had a coil of tubing I had to straighten. Can never get it good and straight by hand
Thanks! It really has helped me on my various plumbing projects.
And its true, no matter how hard I try, I can never get it totally straight by hand. There are in fact tools for this purpose available through various retail outlets but they are ridiculously expensive which of course was my motivation for making it. If you're a shop that does a lot of plumbing it would make sense to buy one but for me and my once-in-a-while things, the tool I made works great.
The way it is in the picture works good for steel 3/16 and 3/8 lines. I put washers in between the angle pieces to allow the larger tubing to roll easier.
Unfortunately, it didn't work for aluminum tubing and aluminum is the toughest to straighten by hand. I got one of those Moroso 20 ft coils to do my trans. cooler lines. I tried it with the steel rollers and the tubing was getting marred. I looked around at Home Depot and the hardware store but I could not find the right rollers. It needs ones that are large enough for 3/8 tubing and made of softer material.
One day recently I saw someone down the street put an old bed frame out on the curb for trash so I grabbed the delrin wheels off it and tried to grind down channels in them to accommodate the tubing. It turned in to a mess though and didn't work. I'll look around again for better rollers if I have to do more in the future.
I gotta make a metal brake for myself too. I've been making brackets and such for my Duster which all seem to come out a little off because I'm bending stuff in a vice. I really dislike half-assed fabrication. :-|
Wish I had a pic of my home made sand blast cabinet too but I can't find one and it's not here at my house. It's large enough to accommodate a rear end housing, has a light, a vacuum system, casters to roll it around and shelf to keep the media bucket on. Worked good for small things but my compressor couldn't keep up with it when I tried to do larger parts.
Tools rule!
