A couple of questions about copper pipe...

[Gareth]

Have you considered aluminium or stainless steel tubing?

There is quite a range available here in various diameters and wall thicknesses:

according to this aluminium tube is about a third the weight of copper (as would be expected):

others have suggested, painted broom handles may be better than metal tube.

Gareth.

PS I haven't actually ordered from aluminiumwarehouse.co.uk, I just happened to be looking for prices on extruded aluminium products earlier this week.

[Steve Firth]

One thing to be careful of that one of my clients fell foul of, are the laws relating to disposal of trade waste. My client was etting rid of knackered disk drives and the driver was given a ticket for the illegal transport of trade waste because he did not have a licence to move the broken disk drives from the office to the disposal site. I've heard of farmers and builders falling foul of over-zealous coppers on this as well. As you're doing with a courier seems fine - at least you don't carry the can if it the courier van is searched.

[Elder]

Actually, one of the most respected leather workers in the industry, world wide, borrowed one of my delrin canes and mentioned who made it, in his Corporal Punishment history class to show modern easy clean synthetic canes compared to traditional Rattan, along side his tooled leather belts/paddles/tawse, and a Dutch couple who were doing rope bondage classes used one of the Russian gas masks I imported, and sold to them earlier in the day.

[Elder]

In the case of what I'm getting from them, it is tyres and inner tubes, and would be no different than someone ordering part worn car tyres and getting them delivered to fit them themselves. Mine are just slightly more part worn than than most :)

[Elder]

It was actually the copper colour that was the primary reason for choosing.

I have a couple of painted steel ones and wanted to add copper as a polished "pretty" choice if possible.

As it is something I'm selling I want it to look professional but craft handmade, not home made. Also needs to be very very strong, hence asking about the reinforcement question. I'm thinking either resin/filler or interference fit dowel is the way forward if I want to continue with copper.

Although copper coloured anodised aluminium tube might be a compromise if it had a decent matched colour and better strength to weight.

[82045]

Try filling the pipe with G26 resin.

[Chris Hogg]

Let us know when we can expect to see you on 'Dragon's Den', possibly with a couple of models for demonstration purposes.

[Owain]

Couldn't Hilary Devey or Deborah Meaden be the models?

Owain