Hello,

Is it feasible to bend 1/2" type L soft copper pipe in a helical
pattern around a cylinder of diameter 2 1/8"? Let's leave my
motivations out it. What tools would be required to bend the soft
copper pipe?

Thanks,
Wayne

Take a hard cylinder that is your 2 and 1/8" diameter. ...Put it in a
vise....Plug one end of your 1/2 inch copper pipe... fill it tightly with
fine sand....bend it around your cylinder.....empty pipe of
sand...presto...helical pattern.....Jim




"Wayne Whitney" wrote in message
. ..
Hello,

Is it feasible to bend 1/2" type L soft copper pipe in a helical
pattern around a cylinder of diameter 2 1/8"? Let's leave my
motivations out it. What tools would be required to bend the soft
copper pipe?

Thanks,
Wayne

"Wayne Whitney" wrote in message
. ..
Hello,

Is it feasible to bend 1/2" type L soft copper pipe in a helical
pattern around a cylinder of diameter 2 1/8"? Let's leave my
motivations out it. What tools would be required to bend the soft
copper pipe?

Thanks,
Wayne

Bending the tubing is easy. It is your motivations that will make it
interesting

In production, tubing is usually bent with a mandrill inside to prevent
kinking. You may be able to us a spring to get the same effect, pulling the
spring as you go. Putting sand is has worked too, but I've never done it
personally so I don't know how simple or difficult it would be. That is a
rather tight radius for hand bending, but I used to work in a company that
did tighter bends on larger tubing with the right tooling.

Sounds a lot like a coil for a condenser. DAMHIK.

;-)

"Andrew" wrote in message
...
Sounds a lot like a coil for a condenser. DAMHIK.

;-)


Either he's fixin' to make hisself a 'still, a wort chiller or a tap beer
cooler. Whatever it is sounds like worthy project.

in case the sand doesn't work, you could also use a spring style tubing
bender. they look like an old screendoor spring and
the copper tubing fits snugly inside the spring. these benders are in any
plumbing department. your mandrel diameter would need
to be reduced somewhat to allow for the thickness of the spring (probably
about .06").
you could quickly try out this method with a piece of scrap tubing.

bill

"Wayne Whitney" wrote in message
. ..
Hello,

Is it feasible to bend 1/2" type L soft copper pipe in a helical
pattern around a cylinder of diameter 2 1/8"? Let's leave my
motivations out it. What tools would be required to bend the soft
copper pipe?

Thanks,
Wayne

On 2005-10-28, Jim & Lil wrote:

Take a hard cylinder that is your 2 and 1/8" diameter. ...Put it in
a vise....Plug one end of your 1/2 inch copper pipe... fill it
tightly with fine sand....bend it around your cylinder.....empty
pipe of sand...presto...helical pattern.....Jim

Sounds good. The helical coil will be going around a length of 2"
copper DWV pipe (0.42" wall thickness, 2 1/8" outer diameter). Will
this be strong enough to use as the bending form? That would
obviously be easiest.

Cheers, Wayne

Wow, that is a great answer! I would have used a snake, and taken 10x as
long to do it....


"Jim & Lil" wrote in message
...
Take a hard cylinder that is your 2 and 1/8" diameter. ...Put it in a
vise....Plug one end of your 1/2 inch copper pipe... fill it tightly with
fine sand....bend it around your cylinder.....empty pipe of
sand...presto...helical pattern.....Jim




"Wayne Whitney" wrote in message
. ..
Hello,

Is it feasible to bend 1/2" type L soft copper pipe in a helical
pattern around a cylinder of diameter 2 1/8"? Let's leave my
motivations out it. What tools would be required to bend the soft
copper pipe?

Thanks,
Wayne