To make a bend in the middle of a piece of tubing, you would grasp it at each end, right? Then you would place it over some hard curved surface and push down hard on both ends of the tube. A flattened fuel line can restrict the flow of fuel and could, ultimately, fail in service. Such wavy flattened bends are the usual result of attempting to bend thin wall tubing to small radii without the aid of a tube bender. You can, of course, but hand formed ends often become flattened and have a poor irregular appearance. After all, why use a fitting where a bend in the tubing will do as well? Tubing bends are much lighter, cheaper and, unlike fittings, can't leak.ĭo not be lulled into thinking that simply because 3/8" aluminum fuel lines are rather ductile you can easily form them by hand. Aluminum tubes are important in fuel systems and so are the bends you make in them. Ultralight builders utilize a lot of pre-bent aluminum tubing in structural elements but these components are, ordinarily, purchased pre-cut and pre-bent from the factory or supplier. These being tubes of a larger diameter present bending problems similar to those experienced with steel tubes. No serious tube bending problem here.Īluminum tubing is not only used for fuel lines, it is also used for windshield and canopy bows and wing tip bows, too. These copper tubes are a mere 1/8" in diameter and may be easily bent by hand or formed around an empty tin can or jar of the proper diameter. Even these are falling into disuse as more builders switch to electrical gauges. Just about the only copper tubes used in homebuilts are the oil pressure line and the primer lines. Builders of other types of aircraft can add windshield and canopy bows, flap handles and sometimes "S" shaped control columns to the bent tube list. Some of them also have tubular wing tip bows, fuselage formers and seat frames as well. These welded tube aircraft are ordinarily endowed with nicely curved tail surfaces made of small diameter steel tubing. That goes for bending steel tubes, copper tubes and aluminum tubes as well.Īnyone building a tube and fabric airplane will probably encounter more opportunities for developing his tube bending skills than he would if he were building a composite. But giving it your best effort does not mean you have to make a big production out of this tube bending thing. Being so visible, their fabrication merits your very best effort. However, I assure you that these few components are important and many of them are, for the most part, highly visible. FORTUNATELY, MOST OF our homebuilt projects do not require very much tube bending.
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