Monobloc basin tap.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Wasn't for myself, though.

[The Medway Handyman]

Carefully :-) As others have said bend them apart gently - don't try to cut them if they are too long, tube cutters or a hacksaw will deform the very soft copper - cut the supply pipes as well. Better still use flexibles - lots of monoblocks now come with proper flexibles.

[John Rumm]

They are made from annealed copper - that bends nice an easily. In fact copper pipe used to be the same (hence easy to bend with a bending spring over your knee). The modern stuff however is described as "half hard" and has much thinner walls (0.8mm vs 1.2), and is much harder to bend.

Even easier than you make it grip on the normal slightly hardened pipe. The olive pushes into the pipe and seals against the fitting.

[John Stumbles]

I tend to use push-fit on them and replace a bit of the pipework feeding up to it with polybutylene (Hep2O or similar).

[John Stumbles]

If it's a basin it should be ceramic and rigid. Unless it's one of those plastic basins: now those really are the spawn of the devil. :-)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

The one I was thinking of was a stainless steel insert sink. I agree it should be ok in a ceramic basin.

[Andrew Gabriel]

For the stainless steel insert sinks, I fit them as far forward as I can (which also means less leaning over when using the sink), and mount the tap in the worktop at the back, not in the sink.