The Fuselage kit came with a 9ft roll of 3/8" 3003 Aluminium Tube for manufacturing the fuel lines. The trouble is that the soft line comes as a coil and needs to be straightened before use, if you want a decent looking set of fuel lines.
I initially straightened them somewhat by unrolling on the concrete floor. But to get them truly straight, i went to the local Hammerbarn and purchased some concave rollers, designed for roller screen doors. These were screwed onto some left over bits of plywood, and a couple of M6 bolts and wingnuts were used for tightening. This tool gets run back and forth on the tube and does a very good job of straightening it.
If the tube still has a little wave in it, i clamped one end into the vice and clamped on some vice grips to the other end, and gave it a couple of whacks with the hammer.
The end result was a couple of lengths of straight tube, ready to be sacrificed on the alter of learning how to bend fuel lines!
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| This was the tube after rolling out across the floor |
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| and after using the roller tool |
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| I bet most of this will end up in the bin! |
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