Take what this fella said to heart. I understand where you're coming from and you wanting to build it yourself but save up a lil bit and buy one. Judging by your posts this project is beyond your current ability. Not trying to take away from you or your desire but I'd hate to see you waste time and money when you could've bought a nice unit and been running around smashing deer with it instead.

 

You could probably get a fab shop to bend the tubing for you and weld it together yourself

 

Uh, that sounds a lot easier than it would be. Make a bumper, especially a front one from scratch is no easy task.

Now if you have a buddy that has one, you cold possibly copy it. But again, pretty hard to do from scratch.


www.bumperdude.com

 

you could use black pipe and buy the weld in 90's, 45's or whatever you need. i had a friend build his this way and it turned out nice. just take your time and grind all your welds down. i have a harbor freight bended and it sucks. look at the jb2 benders if you want a nice one. well worth the extra money.

 

Ok! The way you can bend any size pipe. Fill the pipe with dry sand then plug both ends of the pipe. Make sure you use dry sand if you use damp sand it will make steam and blow up in your face. Place the pipe in a charchol fire if you have air ghently blow air on the fire coals , this will make it hotter. On a flat surface draw your bend , then measure the lenght of the bend and mark your pipe Heat the pipe between the marks and then bend it a little at a time so it goes with your drawing. The sand keeps it from kinking.

 

This will get the pipe bent but the final outcome will be purely ornamental because your gonna lose the temper in any steel or alloy tubing. I guess it would work with black iron pipe but iron pipe doesn't hold a weld very well when yer talkin about something like bumper. I've used it to weld up railings and such but never something to hold the force or impact potential of a bumper. Let's remember that were talkin about one of the most basic safety features of a vehicle.

 

you learned from the oldtimers!!!

 

I agree, building one from scratch is not easy. Trust me, I've done it. And yes, compared to a production bumper, it looks like a redneck homemade piece of crap. I don't know your skills and I don't mean to put you down in any way, but if you're set on building something, your best bet is to just get a local metal shop to bend the pipe for you. They should do it pretty cheap. My bumper I built doesn't have the light guards because I ran out of time and I didn't get to bend any pipe for them. I've been tempted to get a bolt on grille guard off craigslist or a junkyard and cut the light guards off and weld them to my bumper but I don't think it would hold up very well that way. For my grille guard, i used 2" square tubing for the uprights and top rail and 1.5" square tubing for the bottom rail. It's held up just fine so far through 1 deer, a few trees, some fence posts, and pushing/pulling friends' trucks that were stuck. If you want to see a pic of it, check out my album. Its the 2nd pic.

 

https://www.dieselbombers.com/baseme...e-bumpers.html

i realize your looking for ford but the gaurd might work. thats a hell of a bumber for 800 bucks, might be able to get him to send ya just the gaurd portion if thats all ya need.

 

Agreed it would be difficult and its a job I want to try and tackle this summer as well. I made my own cab protector for my truck last winter when I was laid off. Used schedule 40. Looks same as DOM but isn't 100% uniform and has weld inside of pipe. Has 1/8" wall and is pretty strong. Use it to strap down large heavy items all the time. Harbor Freight bender for less than 100 bucks. Put sand inside, used 2 magnetic angle finders and took my time. I have less than 100 bucks, not including bender, in the project but there was definately a lot of time involved.