If you’re like a lot of us off-roaders, you like to make most of your own modifications to your rig. Always to improve it’s off road performance as well as to make it look cool but, as in my case, you probably like the idea of saving a few hard earned dollars as well. Now you probably already have a welder, a helmet, some gloves and a grinder and know how to use them. You’ve made some pretty functional and cool looking items for your truck, but something’s missing. Maybe you’ve made a bumper or tire carrier out of square tube thinking to yourself “this looks pretty nice, but, you know it would look really cool with some round tube on it”. But you dismiss the thought because “tubing benders are too expensive“ or “it would take up so much space in my garage I wouldn’t be able to get my rig in”.

Well I’m here to tell you there is a solution and it won’t take up half your garage or require you to take out a second mortgage to get it! If you haven’t already discovered the joys of owning a compact tube bender then you need to pay attention ‘cause once you experience the world of custom fabrication that opens up to you when you can bend tube you’ll wonder what took you so long. Roll cages, tube doors, exo-cages, tube bumpers, even tube chassis’ are simply yours for the making. I could go on but I think you know what I mean here. To put it mildly, you’ve reached the top of the fabricators food chain once you can bend tube. Ok, maybe not the top but certainly above those poor souls who are destined to cut and weld square tube for the rest of their lives.

Easily the best tube bender for the money is the JD2 Model 3. I purchased mine about 2 years ago and my circle of friends has increased dramatically since then as this bender makes the nicest, smoothest bends on steel tubing that I’ve ever seen. No wrinkles, no flat spots, barely visible stretch and distortion, the Model 3 easily surpasses the quality of bends on many factory made items. I was pointing this out to a friend of mine the other day, as we were looking at a very popular Jeep front bumper made by a well known company, that the bend on the tube was flat on top and kinked on the inside yet this particular item sells for hundreds of dollars! My homemade one, which cost me less than $100 in materials, looks considerably better because of the smoother bends in the tubing.

Before I purchased the JD2 Model 3 manual bender I checked out a number of tube benders, ranging from the simple to the fancy but I kept coming back to JD2, initially because of the price, but the more I looked at the alternatives the more convinced I became of its unarguable value. For less than $300, plus the price of the die(s) to bend your favorite size tube(s), you get a high quality, easy to use, professional piece of equipment that rivals the hi-lift jack in its simplicity and functionality. It is just at home in a custom fabrication shop as it is in a do-it-yourselfer’s garage and it can be used manually (if the spouse or significant other keeps a sharp eye on your expenditures), or easily converted to hydraulic operation (which I eventually ended up doing but that’s a different article).

So If you’re ready to step into the elite realm of the tube bending fabricator and becoming the envy of your friends and enemies alike, check out JD2’s website, watch the videos, and examine the equipment they produce. I can honestly say that I don’t feel there is a better product for the money anywhere and between me and my friends, we plan on keeping this little beauty busy for quite some time.