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Sunday, July 14, 2013

Swaging A Distorted Hose Fitting Seat


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[An aside -- 'swage'[1] is a slightly problematic word. See the footnote.]

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We have a garden hose nozzle that's a pretty decent unit of its kind, but it has a problem -- the seating flange in its hose fitting is distorted, and it won't seal properly. The likelihood of my succeeding at repairing the thing may be slim-to-nil, but I'll give it a try. Here's a view of the hose fitting end of the nozzle in the vise.


The distortion is by the rear jaw of the vise -- the flange is lifted there; no washer can compensate for a distortion like that. I'll see if a brass punch can have any good effect on it.

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A 7/32" punch, followed by the back end of an 11/16" socket wrench, got me some iffy-looking progress, like so.


The flange is light gauge aluminum, and it tore in three places, but I think I can make this work.

A ball-valve goes with this nozzle, and the ball-valve can be permanently attached. I'll install the ball-valve with a high quality orange rubber washer and Permatex Ultra Grey sealant. That should get the nozzle back to a useable state.


I'll just have to be careful to tighten the fitting with the ball-valve's lever correctly oriented for convenient operation -- the fitting will no longer be readily adjustable with cured sealant in it.

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So far, so good.


Tomorrow, I'll add the quick-disconnect and try it out.

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Working Fine -- MONDAY, JULY 15, 2013

I hooked it up and it's back in good order. Here's what the whole unit looks like.


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Note:

[1] Whenever I write 'swage' on blogger, I get the red, squiggly underscore indicating a misspelled or non-existent word. 'Swage' is a proper word. Here's a tangible example of a 'swaging' tool.


'Swage' is a perfectly good English word. I may tend to use the word a bit loosely, but I don't think I'm guilty of having used it incorrectly here. What I did here was I 'swaged' the hose fitting's seating flange down into place.

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