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I finally stopped cheaping out on conduit benders after a $40 mistake
Picked up a bargain brand bender off Amazon for like $40 and it warped on the third job, a commercial run in Austin, and I had to redo 60 feet of conduit. The name brand one I borrowed from a buddy handled the same bends no problem, so I bit the bullet and spent $140 on the real deal. Anyone else been burned by budget tools that just aren't worth the savings?
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cora8631mo ago
That exact thing happened to me back in 2017 with a $35 offset bender from a big box store. It bent fine on the first two jobs, but then the hook started slipping on 3/4 EMT, and I spent a whole afternoon fighting it. My foreman finally handed me his Klein bender and the difference was night and day, it just grabbed the pipe and did the work. I ended up giving the cheap one to a guy I don't like very much, but honestly I should have just thrown it in the trash. Now I keep a good bender in my truck and a backup one in the shop, and I haven't had a bad bend since. The cost hurts upfront, but the time you waste fixing bad work is way more expensive in the long run.
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