Polishing interior of copper lines?
 

Has anyone done this? Gains? Problems?

I'm thinking of try'n this with a shotgun cleaning rod and swabs along with some Brasso and a hand power drill.

Brasso polishes copper to a mirror finish pretty fast when used on the outlside of lines ect. So I'm thinking of doing it to the interieor of the copper lines as well.

Thoughts, advice & suggestions ? ?

Thanks:)

A new level of obsessive-compulsive wrt friction losses!

The only reason I can see using Copper tubing in the first place is to gain a little added passive cooling to the water. If you polish the inside it will probably negate (I think that is the right term) this effect. Cleaning the inside is a good idea but I think polishing may do more harm than good. Other than that copper tubing is a bitch to work with in such tight areas as a PC WC'ing loop.

Also that lime green look of anti freeze running through the clear tubing is for some reason more and more appealing every day. :eek: Damn modders are getting to me....

pH,

Guilty as charged. But would seem to me to be so easy to do, why not? I already have the cleaning rods & swabs as well as the hand drill.

Jaydee,

I thought the largest advantage of copper lines to be lower headloss due to larger ID, although passive cooling is also a plus.

While I can well see why normal copper water lines would be a bitch in a case, what about making use of air conditioning/refrigeration soft flexable copper lines? This would route almost as easy as Tygon, but still offer the advantages of copper lines.

I happen to like those colored dyes in many systems as well. UV most of all. Would still add it for the small areas of clear tubing I'll have.

This applies more towards fittings than tubing. You can use larger ID hose but not necassarily larger ID barbs. Thats why I used the Copper fittings on the Lemon Block Cu. The ID of 1/2" 1/4"NPT barb is only about 3/8". Problem is there isn't a larger ID barb to use with 1/4"NPT thread. The next step up is 3/8"NPT but the holes are way to big. I got some poly barbs that I bored out to 7/16" which works out ok aswell.