Copper Washers

So you know how you think that you can go down the the boat and do a small job in a few minutes.  Well that's what I tried to do today.  I noticed a small amount of dirt in my fuel bowl while I was checking my oil.  So I decide that the best course of action would be to drain out the dirty.  So this is where the day goes sideways.  I opened the drain cock and dirt came out.....air went in.  Now I need to drain the air out of the system. Easy right?  Not so much.  Found out that one of the other owners had crossed threaded the bleed screw on top of the fuel filter housing so when I backed it off to bleed air out it would go back in.  So now I had to remove the complete filter housing from the engine and tap out the hole for a bigger bolt.  I managed to do this with only one trip to the store.
Now to put it all back together again.  I got everything mounted back on the side of the engine.  But I couldn't get a good seal on the copper washers that sealed the fuel lines to the filter housing.

But after talking to one of the older sailors at the club he told me how to make them reusable.  You take the washers and hang them from a piece of wire and heat them over the stove until they are glowing red then drop them into cold water.  This makes them go soft again and makes them for you can reuse them.   I put the washer back in after this heat treatment and they sealed like they were suppose to. I just I need to add a few of these washers to my spares list.

5 minute job turned into 6 hours.