Don’t be too hard on yourself, flaring brake lines is a real PIA for me too.

Bullet Bob wrote:

Mike, be sure to follow MS's advice and DO NOT over do the second step of the double flare praocess.  Bring it down just enough to form the flare and make a little seat for the fitting to seat to.  Then when you pull it down into the fitting with the nut the flare will be finish formed and will seat and seal to the fitting.

I started doing this and  have yet to have another leak.  In fact, I had two factory-formed flares leak on new tubing last week and re-made the pieces with my own flares...no leaks.

BB
 

BB is right. This method always works. O'reilly's has a really good flaring tool for rent if you have one near you. I liked it so much, I bought it. 
Best of luck.

Bought that one when it was on sale a couple of years ago, Day.  You are correct, it is a really fine piece of equipment.  Does perfect bubble flairs too.

BB

 

On that fancy flare tool, how does it work if the flare is at the end of a tight radius bend?

Fancy took needs about 2” of straight line for the clamping blocks. 

I have that exact same tool, Summit also sell it.  Pretty much the best thing since sliced bread.

I mock up a line with solid wire to get the length, cut and flare the line, then bend if there are bends that need to be at the ends of the line.

Or, if you need a bend to go all the way up against the tube nut, you can use the cupro-nickle tubing, put your flare and nut on tube, then use just the grooved mandrel of your tubing bender and your fingers to bend the tubing right up to the nut.

Ron,  I've never used the cupro-nickle tubing but I started using the green poly coated tubing years ago.  It can be bent very nicely using the method you suggest or even via the two-thumbs method.  I get perfect no-leak flares on this stuff with my Fancy Tool.

BB

Barry,
Oohh! Hydraulic! You can really squish tubing with that one.

Regarding making double-flairs with CU-NI brake lines.  Just finished using CU-NI 3/16 line for the first time.  I've made double-flairs on steel and SS lines in the past w/o issues, although the SS tubing went much better using a lubricant.  Back to my point, I had leaks with the CU-NI, had to re-do several flairs and believe there were two issues ...
I always used a small file to make the chamfer, using this on the CU-NI I believe that I removed too much material and this likely made the tube too "thin", and I was too aggressive by cranking down on the flair tool too much.  I believe these two items flattened out the flair too much to get the seal required in the fitting.
So, after watching a YouTube video, I used emery instead of the file, and did not crank down as hard on the flair tool.  These items allowed the new flair to be "thicker" and to seat the "soft" Cu-NI tubing better into the fitting, and produced a no-leak seal.
Hope this helps.
Oh, and the CU-NI tubing is much much easier to bend and work with than the SS tubing.

Required for operation:

1: An automatic transmission and functional brakes

OR

2. A manual transmission and a functional horn

I actually drove my Jeep without brakes for quite some time (not on the road, trails only).  I found that with proper planning, and only running in 4Low, I could downshift into first, double clutch into reverse, and ease the clutch out to effectively stop it wherever I wanted.