The jaws of a standard and an ergonomic manual swaging tool are controlled by opening and closing the handles, the same way as you would open and close the handles on a pair of scissors to control the blades.
Holding the handles open, the jaws are placed on the edge of the pipe end, up to the required swage length (the maximum swage length available on a standard type manual swaging tool is 40mm [1 1/2″]).
Closing the handles of the swaging tool will cause the jaws to close around the wall of the pipe, and squeezing firmly will cause them to ‘bite’ down, creating the swaged form desired.
Standard and ergonomic swaging tools can each incorporate either three or five blades. These will be divided between the top and bottom jaws of the tool so that they interlock. The smaller number of blades is always on the top jaw.
The blades on the top jaw create the recesses in the swage by exerting downward force on the wall of the pipe, while the blades on the bottom jaw create the ridges in the swage by providing resistance against the top jaw’s downward force.
A single compression using a swaging tool with three blades will create one ridge, with two recesses either side.
A single compression using a swaging tool with five blades will create two ridges and three recesses, on either side of and between the two ridges created.
As each recess in the pipe edge is created, the edge is pulled inward slightly – when the entire end of the pipe is swaged, this results in a final 1mm reduction in the end diameter; just enough to allow insertion into a second, non-swaged pipe.
