Made-It-Myself Portable Pipe Flattener

Made-It-Myself Portable Pipe Flattener FARM SHOP Miscellaneous 30-2-38 "It's easy to build and anyone with mechanical sense could make one," says Jim Eastman, Eskridge, Kansas, about the electric/hydraulic portable pipe flattener he built from a used cylinder and scrap steel. Eastman and his sons have a sideline fencing business and needed a fast way to flatten the ends of pipe to weld it to pipe posts. Before this, they used a sledge hammer and anvil to flatten pipe. "If you have a lot of pipes to flatten, that gets old in a hurry," he says. A 25-ton 6-in. stroke hydraulic cylinder mounts inside a 24-in. tall rectangular frame made from lengths of 1 and 2-in. thick solid steel bar. He added a handle and two small cylinder stabilizers that function as brackets when hinged to the pickup bed. It's powered by an electric/hydraulic pump that operates off the portable welder/generator, or with a hand pump. He welded a 1 by 3 by 4-in. steel bar to the end of the cylinder to flatten the pipe ends and added metal guides to the sides. Although one person can use it, Eastman says he has another hold the end of an 8-ft. length to ensure that both ends are parallel when flattened. "You can stick the pipe in there flush but the cylinder wants to push it out as you're flattening it," he says. "I usually push the pipe in about an extra 1/2 in. so it doesn't do this. "The biggest pipe we can flatten is 3 1/2 in.," he says. "It works great." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, James H. Eastman, 26792 Snokomo Rd., Eskridge, Kansas 66423 (ph 785 256-6422; jefencing@excite.com).

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