How to Flare Thin Wall Tubing
If you don't want to solder copper piping for your water lines, there is a way around it. Instead of using rigid copper piping that must be soldered, use soft, malleable copper tubing instead. Because it's soft instead of rigid you can easily flare the ends of the copper tubing before screwing on brass fittings. These fittings will allow you to easily create leak-proof joints between different sections of the tubing. Does this Spark an idea?
Things You'll Need
- Copper tubing
- Brass flare fitting
- Copper pipe-cutting tool
- Copper tubing-flaring tool
Instructions
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Cut a length of copper tubing with a copper pipe-cutting tool. Slide the tubing into the jaws of the cutting tool and turn the handle to tighten the jaws until the rotating cutting wheel bites into the copper. Swivel the tool 360 degrees. Tighten the jaws a little more and swivel. Repeat until the tube is cut all the way through.
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Take out the pipe clamp portion of the flaring tool. The clamp has various-sized holes drilled in it that correspond to the various outside dimensions of different-sized copper tubing. Slide the end of the copper tubing through the hole size that matches it and use the thumb screws to tighten the clamp around the copper tubing. The end of the copper tubing should protrude about 1/4 inch beyond the face of the clamp.
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3
Slide the flaring tool onto the pipe clamp so it's sitting perpendicular to the copper tube. Align the pointed flare tool tip with the mouth of the copper tubing and start turning the handle behind the flaring tip. As the handle is turned the flaring tip moves closer to the mouth of the pipe. When it makes contact, tension is set up and the flaring tool braces hard against the clamp. Keep turning the handle of the flaring tool and watch for the end of the soft copper tubing to flare out. Stop turning the handle when flaring is complete.
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Tips & Warnings
When flaring copper tubing during an actual installation, make sure to slide the threaded, brass nut of the brass fitting onto the copper tubing before flaring the end. If you wait to do this after flaring the copper, you won't be able to slide the brass nut over the flared copper.
Don't over flare the end of the copper tubing. The copper will split.
