HELP: question about tubes / piping on steampunk figures

Posted in Custom Workstation

I see so many cool steampunk figures and customs I wanted to try my hand at some. Finding gears was easier than I thought, but I am having a little trouble locating pieces that would be good for the tubing or conduit. I just heard about using guitar strings which I am going to explore. Are there any other suggestions? I saw some tubing on Ebay that is from Lego sets and wondered if it would work. It has that ridged detail like conduit has and that is what I am looking for. Any suggestions would be helpful! Thanks!