oklahoma red wrote:Adding to what Nicholas said,
One of the reasons brass is the metal of choice is that it is hard enough that one can cut teeth in the end and have them hold up long enough to get the groove cut. The groove needs to be cut slowly to keep the heat down. Remember that the tube needs to be removed after cutting the groove in order to apply epoxy to hold it back in place. If things get to hot in the cutting process there may be issues in getting the ring back in place after the wood and metal have cooled. Or, conversely, the ring may just fall into place and you'll wind up with gaposis. Due to manufacturing tolerances in the process of making the tubing, variations between lots and variations between manufacturers I think you'll open a can of worms trying cut with one tube and then try to install something else that was not used to cut. The planets may align once but can you repeat it?
I don't have any tables of hardness data at my fingertips but most likely there are grades of aluminum that are hard enough to do the job.
As Premal is fond of saying: "TIAFO".
So, I found some aluminum that is B75 on the rockwell, compared to the brass tube I have which is B77. I'm not super familiar with this scale, but that seems pretty close. I ordered some, and will test it out. Thanks guys, for your input.
Jeremy.