Doug DeHaven I have used many pipe expanders over the years, but this one stood out to me as unique, I will go more into detail on that below. But the first step was to restore it!
I took it completely apart to clean it up, blasted it, than wire wheeled it. This worked, but I wanted it to work better than stock, so I polished all the sliding surfaces to make them move as friction free as possible.
This brings me to why this one is rare, take a close look at the pyramid shaped piston see how it is conical or round? This was not a great design, ever since this early one, that changed this to have flat facets for the parts to slide along and be lower friction. And allow it to expand farther with the same size parts. Also the single bolt with washer was not a great design for their was lots of sliding force on static parts, newer ones use thrust bearings on the mating surface. Takes less force to operate for the same work!
Herre is a photo from online of what a newer style looks like for comparison.
