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Question:

How to fix copper pipe leak?

I have a 1/2 cold water copper pipe leaking in unfinished part of basement-it is hard to fix as there is a 3/4 hot water pipe crossing under the leakwhich I think caused some of the problem. My son (I am 69 yr. female) is coming next weekend and will replace it. Until then he told me to cut garden hose and fix it-that worked with clampsslight dripbut last night it stopped working. The only hole I can see in the pipe is a small one on the bottom of horizontal pipeI think it started leaking again because hot water pipe caused the area around hole to give. I also had to wrap the top and bottom of pipe with hose to stop leakingjust the bottom didn't work. I am afraid to use epoxy as it will adhere to the pipe below it. Last night I bought a repair clamp with rubber gasket-it didn't work at allI am not surebut water seems to go up the sides of rubber and drip from the top. Any ideas would be great as I have to keep turning water to house off and on.

Answer:

If it is the stupidest system how come you can't figure out how to get past it?
You can also use low melting point metals such as Wood's Metal or Field's Metal to do fixtureing. Some melt at below 70 deg C and all you need is a jig with a cavity filled with the metal. Heat the jig, place part into molten metal and wait for it to solidify machine part and heat it again to remove part. Waxes are useful and used in gemstone work, they are conveniently heat reversible and many different grades of waxes are available. Bitumen/tar mixtures are used by lens grinders to mount glass while grinding and polishing. Many epoxies and resins have a weakness for some or other solvent, check the incompatibility lists. The strong solvents are often not so nice to humans though like Methylene Chloride and Trichloro Ethylene so you need to establish suitable handling protocols. Acetone is reasonably safe but not as active, any solvent takes time to breakdown good quality epoxies and resins. Expanding construction foam (and the two part stuff used for filling fibreglass surf boards) may be strong enough if they are used in a small gap. Powdered Polystyrene is melted to mount metal specimens for cutting, grinding and polishing for metallographic work (microphotography and spark spectroscopy) but the specimens are generally not expected to be removed though you could usually melt the plastic off carefully. Perhaps not suitable for your application Using a compressible solid like Masonite/hardboard or rubber to clamp the part may be an option even if you use a new piece each time you clamp it assuming the clamping forces are not too strong. Magnetic chucks are popular for ferrous metals and vacuum chucks for flat surfaced parts, surprising holding forces are possible.

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