TIGHT TUBE BENDING
Sometimes you may attempt to make a short tight bend in a piece of steel or copper tubing. If your tube bender will not make as tight of a radius as you might desire and know that if you try by hand it will kink, try this. By melting soft solder into the tube you can keep the tube walls from collapsing and you can make that bend without kinking the tube. After you have made the bend, heat the tube and simply blow the solder out. It works great.

Steve Albrecht
Goderich, Machine Shop
Ontario, Canada
February, 2020