At 12:54 AM 8/4/2010 Wednesday, Alistair Bell wrote:
>say is he must be crimping small and lightly loaded stuff. if you
>have access to real crimper/swager, use it even if its an awkward
>tool to get in position for your job. And besides, your swaging a
>stainless fitting, not some soft alloy.

And if you don't have access, get access or make a swaging tool
yourself if you can groove and probably case-harden a double block
that can be squeezed with bolts.

Swaging is a very intense process, much more so than crimping.  On
racing dinghies we used to use Nicropress fittings and the
appropriately-sized Nicropress tool to make up wire around thimbles
and such.  The fittings were copper and the tool had a slot gauge
attached to make sure that the fitting was adequately swaged.   The
tool I have works to finished diameters of .165 and .220
inches.  It's a compound-action tool like a bolt cutter, with a
mechanical advantage of about 80 for the small fitting and about 135
for the large.  As I recall it still took a fair amount of stick to
close it.  The anvil is a quarter inch wide, so on the larger fitting
it was exerting (at closure) with fifty pounds force on the handles
about 40,000 psi on the fitting.  As I said, these fittings are
copper, not stainless.  As a WAG I'd think you'd need at least double
the pressure for s/s.

Yours,
David