Shoutout to the old timer who showed me a trick with a 3/4 inch conduit bender

Was doing a run in a tight corner on a job in Tacoma last week. This guy on site told me to mark the bend point 2 inches back from where I normally would. The offset came out perfect on the first try, saved me a chunk of scrap. Anyone else have a simple trick like that for bending?

3 comments

3 Comments

king.kevin1mo ago

Oh man, that's a solid tip. I mean, I had a guy show me to use the width of my hand to measure a stub up once, and it just works. Those little tricks save so much time.

alicelopez1mo ago

Read an article once that called those tricks "tribal knowledge." It's the stuff you never learn in a classroom or from a book. It gets passed down from person to person on the job. That hand-width trick is a perfect example. Makes you wonder how many other little fixes are out there that we just don't write down.

roberts.jordan23d ago

Isnt that the truth though? It's funny how much of this trade is just passed around like that. @alicelopez had a good point about it being "tribal knowledge" - makes it sound like we're in some secret society or something. But really it's just guys who've been doing this longer than we have sharing the shortcuts they figured out after messing up a hundred times. You can read a code book all day and it wont tell you that eyeballing it with your hand is faster than grabbing a tape. I swear half this job is just learning what not to do from watching other people screw it up.