Pro Handyman Blog

When fitting plumbing, particularly copper piping, you invariably will need to cut the pipe. Cutting copper piping will leave burrs on the end where you have made the cut. It’s a good idea to get rid of the burrs so that they will not interfere with joining the pipe and fittings together.

There are several methods of cutting the piping. You can use a hacksaw, although I don’t encourage this because not only will you get major burrs on the piping, but the cut won’t always be a nice square cut. As you move your hand back and forth, the blade will tend to wander off of the cut. I would use a pipe cutter. This is a tool that fits around the pipe and makes a nice square cut. It has guide rollers that keeps the cut square and as you roll the tool around the pipe, the cutting wheel gradually cuts into the piping. As you roll the tool around the pipe, you gradually tighten the cutting wheel and it cuts right through. The burr from this tool is around the inside perimeter of the cut, rather than at the exterior which is what you see when using a hacksaw.

To remove the inside burr, there is a reaming attachment on the tool that you simply insert into the pipe and rotate around. It quickly removes the burr. For the hacksaw burr, you can try emery cloth or even a metal file and sandpaper.