Building tips and hints

[David47]

I'm interested in why you say that. Surely heating the metal to red hot and then letting it cool afterwards is the same as annealing, which I understand makes metal stronger. I'd like to know why this process would prove to be the opposite.

I'm with Phil and John E on this. Simply heating a metal to anneal it reduces whatever strength the material had. The way strength is increased is by controlled temperature levels for set times followed by set cooling rates, then for some metals, quenching in either oil or water. For aluminium alloys, additional cold working such as stretching is also done for some strength tempers. So I agree with Phil. There are a lot of myths out there about strengthening metals. Having waffled on about this though, if the heat affected zone of the choke or throttle cable cable is beyond the clamped area, all good. For flight control cables, I think the AC43 reference quoted in Phil's response is pretty clear in order for best practice. However, if you do cut cable by this heating method, I'd leave a good 1" or more under the shrink sleeve as suggested by Lowell. For my build, I just wrapped the cable with a strong tape and then cut it with a good quality cable cutter. No fraying issues.