When making PVC furniture and other PVC projects, bending the pipe gives it a cleaner, more professional look. Plus, it opens clever ways for you to create all sorts of interesting designs. It’s pretty easy once you learn these techniques.
This is what you will need:
1. Heat gun. I paid about $15.00 for a sale at a home improvement center.
2. 4 x 8 foot sheet of 3/4 inch commercial grade plywood
3. A few 3 1/2-inch nails or a 3-foot-long 3/8-inch wooden dowel
4. Small bucket of sand
To practice, lay a 3-foot-long, half-inch or 3/4-inch-diameter PVC pipe on a flat surface, like your garage floor, a table, a sheet of plywood, or whatever. Turn on the heat gun, then position the “business end” an inch or so from the section of pipe you want to bend. A little closer and you can burn it. Slowly rotate the tubing with one hand and move the heat gun back and forth 3 to 4 inches in each direction with the other hand.
Tip: Be sure to wear leather gloves and work in a well-ventilated area.
You will see that, in just a minute or two, the pipe becomes malleable. Turn off the heat gun, lift the tube and slowly bend it to the desired shape.
oops! See how the pipe twists? Not good. But here is an easy and cheap solution.
Sand. You can pick up a small bag of clean sand at most hardware stores. Or buy a small bucket at a garden store, at the beach, or on the playground.
Next, put a PVC cap on one end of a new piece of pipe. Fill the tube to the top with sand and tighten it down firmly with a wooden dowel. Then put another cap on the opposite end.
Note: Do not glue caps to pipe.
Heat the tube as described above. The sand evenly distributes heat and will prevent it from bending. Bend the pipe, then let it cool for a couple of minutes. Remove caps and sand.
Tip: Hold the pipe slightly beyond the desired radius for at least two minutes. Due to the recovery characteristics of PVC, bent pipe may “snap back” slightly after cooling. You will find the best position after you have experimented a couple of times.
Next is learning how to get the same radius for duplicate projects. For example, bending bends for curved arms of a PVC chair.
For that, you will need to build a simple folding template. Cut a sheet of plywood into a 3 foot square. (Depending on your project, the square may be larger or smaller.) On the plywood, pencil in the radius you want to bend. Then hammer a few nails along the line.
Prepare the tube as before, heat and when ready place the tube next to the nails and bend. Repeat to make as many duplicates of the curve as you need.
Tip: Hammer a nail into the opposite “side” of the pipe at each end to hold the bend in place while it cools.
To make a more permanent template, cut a few short pieces (three inches, give or take) of 3/8-inch-diameter dowels.
Draw a two-inch grid pattern on the plywood, then drill holes at each intersection. Hit the pegs into the holes. You can then move them around various radii. The tighter the grid pattern you draw, say one inch instead of two inches, the more variation you can achieve.
Here is one more way to make a PVC pipe bending template.
On the leftover sheet of plywood, draw your radius and cut it out with a jigsaw. You can make several different curves with the rest of the plywood. Then nail the piece to the 3 foot square sheet of plywood, heat the pipe and bend. Again, hammer a nail into each end of the pipe to hold the bend in place while it cools.
These simple PVC bending templates are easy and inexpensive to make. With practice, you’ll soon be creating all sorts of interesting and useful PVC projects.