De-soldering copper pipe

That is the danger. In my experience removing a soldered joint often requires (or is given) a lot more heat, and for longer, than soldering it in the first place. This may have partially melted the solder in the connection an inch away now leaving voids in an imperfect soldered joint.

As I mentioned before, is 1 inch enough for a reliable compression fitting? The OP would have to ensure that the pipe is fully inserted into the fitting as the nut as it is tightened. A quick check on a gash compression fitting in my spares box requires a total of around 17mm of pipe (for insertion into the fitting and the width of the olive).

Is the lenght not 1" + however much has gone into the solder fitting which is being removed?

you can reflow that one once the compression fitting is on

It is always difficult to just the temperature where you're trying to get a fitting apart. At a pinch I guess you could use a wet rag around a fitting to make it stay put.

The next one is a T-piece in a long vertical length of pipe so doing anything with that will be a bit of a ball-ache. Really don?t want to have to mess with it (unless I absolutely have to).

Tim

Indeed. The stump of pipe will be plenty long enough.

Tim

Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and cut out a section of pipe on one side of the T fitting, then you have 3 bits to neatly replace, a straight join, a length of pipe and the T.

Must admit when I first read that I assumed it meant on an adjacent pipe. However if it is on the same pipe, then yup that will be harder.

(although in that case I would desolder the one further up and add a new stub of pipe to come out in the position required)

Fredxx brought next idea :

That has always worked for me - wet tissue, rag or whatever. It doesn't need much evaporation to keep solder from melting.

I can now confirm that that did indeed work. Not as hard as I thought it would be.

Tim

Just wondering why you'd change from something neat looking that never leaks to something ugly that often does?