G’day
I get hose and other related fittings from my industrial hose supplier. Although they probably have lower quality stuff available, what I get from them is very durable, it’s often soaked in oil and left out in the weather for years.
Ours is a local company but there are places all over the country that sell industrial and hydraulic hoses. Purple Pig and Enzed used to operate national networks but I think Purple Pig may have folded. Ours keeps many different sizes for different purposes but they also have catalogs with a heap of different hose and fittings with a myriad of different properties and have ordered things in for me.
Some hose can be heat bent and some just collapses, breaks down or loses flexibility after heating. I’ve made up bent hoses for various jobs by filling them with ball bearings to preserve the internal diameter, heating them and bending them to shape around whatever comes to hand to use as a former then leaving them to cool. The temperatures they soften at vary considerably. Some hoses you can get data sheets on that tell you this information, mostly not, so it’s just a matter of experimenting. It can get a bit messy and smelly.
There used to be a service for semi rigid hydraulic hose where you could custom order specific shapes, I haven’t had to do that for years though.
Dunno if that helps at all
Ironbark
