Will,
Hey! Hey! Thanks for taking a look.
My LHS has a display ficture that rotates, kinda like what holds eyeglasses in a drug store.
All kinds of stuff, angle, channel, flat, round, square, and in all kinds of sizes from really small, smaller than what you see, to large. Sold in lengths, 3-4 to a package. 4.00.
Not many glues that I have work well with it. I use "thick" CA and hit it with the speed activator. But there is a special ABS glue, I never tried to hunt it down for anything I've done with CL. I had some of it years ago, melts the ABS, like welding.
That cage is the only place I used the tubing. The detailing for this model is simple and light, in fact, it's mostly paper and soft balsa, really light. I did use a tad of thin flat ABS stock.
The flat stock can be made into just about anything. You can bend and form any ABS material with heat. You neet heat to bend rods also.
I heat the rod then lay it in a jig that has the shape. Cools off it stays the shape. Without the jig you cannot control the radius or the bend.
Ask me how I know?
I started this cockpit 15 years ago and will probably never finish the model? Mostly all flat stock.
Photos have been Posted before. More work than I'd like to admit.