I finished making the last few 1/4" brake lines on my truck, used the FedHill flare tool to do it.
The flares came out just perfect, and no problems making the flare in stainless, but there is no way around it, it takes a lot of force to form the stainless.
I made two short lines, less than 6", out of the copper/nickel alloy brake line sold by FedHill, it flares very easy, and bends even easier. It was much less work to make those two lines in the alloy than in stainless. I was able to bend it about to shape with my tube bender, and just by hand tweak it to fit. If I had done the lines in stainless it would have to be just about perfect when I was done with the bender, as it is hard to tweak a short stainless line by hand.
The copper/nickel alloy brake line looks just like what it is, not quite as red as copper, and not as silver as nickel, just in between. It can be polished, but will resemble copper more than stainless.
I will be using more of this line in the future, as it is easy to work, and just as trouble free as stainless. For long simple lines I'll probably still use stainless, as the cost is less.
One downside to using the FedHill flare tool is the length required to clamp the line in the tool is longer than a traditional type flare tool (this is why it works so well when flaring difficult materials though), and as a result a bend can't be right near the end of the line. With 1/4" line a standard tube nut, and my tight radius 1/4" tube bender I can get 1.75" from end of line to outside of a 90+ degree bend using the FedHill flare tool. With my traditional type bender I can get significantly less distance.
To overcome this small problem I need to buy a pair of tube bending pliers like these
http://cgi.ebay.com/Brake-Line-Bend...dZViewItemQQ_trksidZp1638Q2em118Q2el1247 They allow bends even tighter to the end than what I could get away with with the old type flare tool.
I went ahead and bought the dies and clamp blocks to double flare 5/16" and 3/8" tube, but have not tried them yet, I imagine that to do stainless the wall thickness needs to be pretty thin. I'll do some 5/16" stainless in a few weeks, I'll know then. And I have some thin wall 3/8" I can try too.
Grigg
