For annealing you will need:

- Flux Capacitor
- Box with window and gloves like Homer J has at work
- 911 on speed dial
- band-aids

;)

I use a propane torch (like you use for plumbing at home) to heat the
metal til it's red-orange in colour. It helps to have lower lighting
to see the colour change though safety first right?

With copper or brass, you can cool it down with water or air cool.
Seems to make no difference. (other than any possible water spatter)

Annealing = making metal softer. Working it will harden it.

I don't recall exactly what I did to expand the piece but I either:

used a socket on 1/2" extension in vice as mandrel, slipped piece on,
hit it with a hammer making sure the mandrel was "backing it up" at
all times. This spreads the metal. Or.....

Pounded a suitably sized sockets through the pipe bit thus expanding it.

Thinking now, maybe this isn't an evermans solution, but, well, there
ya go. I've had some experience shaping brass (dent removal etc.) so
this wasn't foreign to me. The ID is close so it didn't take much to
get it to fit over the push arm.

That 5 min. LePage epoxy didn't hold that great. But the piece is more
or less held in place by the arms where they pivot.

Neil.

On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 9:14 PM, Rocket J Squirrel
<camping.elliott@gmail.com> wrote:
> "Embiggen" is a perfectly cromulent word.
>
> On that page, you wrote, "Bushing: 3/4" pipe. Annealed, expanded a little
> w/normal hand tools."
>
> What, pray tell, hand tools does one use to expand 3/4'' pipe? And annealing
> . . . this is a process involving a leather blacksmith apron, asbestos
> gloves, goggles with smoked lenses, and a small boy pulling on a bellows --
> right?
>

--
Neil Nicholson '81 VanaJetta 2.0 "Jaco"

http://tubaneil.googlepages.com/

http://groups.google.com/group/vanagons-with-vw-inline-4-cylinder-gas-engines