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I had a hard time with this too but was eventually able to replace all tubes on my 1969 Nauset. I have a couple of recommendations ...read everything you can find on how to do it then buy extra tubes and practice a few times off the boat. I found this to be the kind of thing you have to do to understand, you can only read so much. I even made a plywood box and cut the appropriate size holes and put it in a vise. This way I could slide a tube in cut it off, slide on an o ring and practice with the airhammer. I worked out a lot of the bugs this way and had my technique down before i worked on the boat

Purchase the air hammer and make the modifications. It is definately worth it , it will make a hard job manageble. The flaring tool works well on tubes where the flared ends are 90 degrees to the tube but for any flare at an angle the air hammer is the call. Also buy the preflared tubes from a dealer or Sue at twin cities I found the brass to be so much easier to flare than the lenghts of straight brass tube I got from mcmaster carr.

I really struggled with the straight brass tubes I got from mcmaster carr because they were so "hard" - I split a couple even after annealing them and struggled even with the air hammer to flare them. The preflared tubes I could literally hold in one hand, angle the preflared side to match the interior angle perfectly with the air hammer in the other. I didn't even need to anneal them. Then I could slip the preflared end in the boat (I bedded it w 4200, clean up with acetone not denatured alcohol) With a friend backing up the inside holding the preflared end and o-ring tight to the hull I could easily flare the outside to match any angle on the hull.

good luck