Another Tubing Tool

[Dennis H.]

I am at it again, I am making a tubing tool to put in droplines into the laterals.

I have the handle part done and the top part that will hld the 2 visegrips. My idea uses 2 6" 5/16 bolts to keep the visegrips parallel to one another. You can see it in the pics below.

I am thinking of adding a spring to pull the handles together so that once a place a fitting between the ends of the tubing I will not have to have a 3rd hand to squeeze and hold the fitting. we'll see.

It took a little calcuting to get the distances from the central pivot to the ends to get enough travel that I had room for the fitting between the tubing.

I will post more pics and also the design plans, they are on my other computer, once I work on it tomorrow.

[Sugarmaker]

Nice fab work! Hope it functions as good as it looks.

Chris C.

[Dennis H.]

Here is few more pics of the completed tubing Tool.

The only thing that I had to do was redrill the thread couplings with a 1/2" drill bit to open it back up once I cut them in half. It was just a little too tight for the barbed ends to fit in. So all I did was clamp it shut with the vise grips and redrilled. Now it is back to a nice round 1/2".

I also now have it paint all red unlike the pic.

[Dennis H.]

And here is the plans I drew up to make the tubing tool for anyone who wants them.

The two long bolts that the vise grip slide on on 5/16x6" bolts. They slide thru 3/8" nuts.

To help keep the vise grip paralel to one another I clamped a short lenght of 1/2 all-thread into them and then welded the visegrips to the tops of the outside 3/8" nuts on the slides.

[smitty76]

Nice fab work. how do the vise grips mount to the 5/16 bolt slides?

[Dennis H.]

I welded them to the outside 3/8" nuts that the bolts slide thru.

[smitty76]

I was not sure if maybe they had nuts welded to them and they went between the nuts welded to the plates pinned to the red pliers.

[Fred Henderson]

I have just one suggestion and that is put a couple of wing nuts on the visegrip adjusting screw so it will stay where you put it, sort of like a lock nut. You did a nice looking job.

[Dennis H.]

That part was taken care of by a spot of weld. I figured that with the mod's that I did to them that they won't be good for anything else but this tool and for $3.95 at Harbor Freight I can just toss them if they should fail or need replacing down the road.

[jtthibodeau]

Very nice work, Dennis. And thanks for sharing the prints with us.