TTo anyone considering assembly of braided AN hoses
 

Do yourself a favor and buy a set of cable cutters. I spent a good deal of time researching the best way to cut stainless braided hose and the overwhelming answer was to use a high speed cutoff wheel.

I tried my angle grinder and that just ended up fraying the weave badly. The dremel with a fiberglass reinforced cutoff wheel was better but still suboptimal. Both methods leave a large amount of debris within the hose which is difficult to clean out and can be very detrimental.

After spending well over an hour trying to assembly only 2 hoses I was left frustrated and pissed off. I did get the fittings on but I wasn't happy.

Got the 28" cable cutters from harbor freight ($17.99) and it's ridiculous how easy it is to assemble the hose now. The cut is everything with assembling the fittings. The cable cutters leave a nice straight cut with no fraying of the hose. I literally had the fittings on in about 30 seconds once I had a nice straight cut with no fraying and most importantly NO debris in the line.


http://hfreviews.com/thumbnails/6649.gif

You can find specialty braided hose cutters online and I'm sure they'd be better in the long run than the HF unit, but for the price it cant be beat.

Been there, bought that, you should have searched.

https://www.performancetrucks.net/fo...s-hose-498419/

I'm sure I came across that thread in the couple of hours I searched. Regardless, even in that thread people mention all kinds of other methods, cutoff wheel, chisel, etc. I just dont see the point of even bothering with those. Now I'm itching to assemble more AN fittings.

Wait until you try assembling teflon lined stainless hose. Talk about fun. Regular ss hose is a cake walk compared to teflon

The fun never ends, does it? :jest:

Wrap the hose with electrical tape where you cut it and it will not fray ;)

Not true, entirely. I used the electrical tape. It does reduce fray, but not eliminate it.

With the cable cutters, no wrap is needed.

Works perfect for me every time ;) so yes it's true .

I use 4.5" Razor wheels from flexovit on my metabo angle grinder

I have used the electrical tape and grinder method before and it worked fine for me too.

Sounds good Tim. Helps to have the ideal cutoff wheel. Whatever garbage wheel I was using from Home Depot obviously didn't get the job done. :hack: