On Aug 4, 12:58*pm, wrote:
In previous projects I really haven't had the need to dry assemble a
bunch of fittings to get the alignment right and make sure it would
all work before gluing. * In the case of some recent work with 2" PVC
I had pipes making a tight 180 turn and together with a 3 way valve,
it all has to align just right with the existing piping in a short
distance with no wiggle room.

So, I put the pipes and fittings together dry first, to make sure they
aligned OK. * But there were two problems:

1 - It was very hard to get the dry pipe to bottom in the sockets of
the fittings

2 - It was even harder to then pull them apart.

I tried using some dish washing soap, but it didn't help much. * Which
got me to wondering if there are any tricks the pros use?

Newer PVC seems to have more of the tight fit problem than I can
recall from past projects. Nowadays I routinely use regular machine
shop type sanding strips to get a decent moveable fit. With the
heavily bodied cements (resin containing) being used it should make no
difference at all in mechanical integrity. Haven't had any leakers,
ever, in doing this. Using sanding strips makes it less likely to make
a dumb mistake such as making a groove with a flat file that could
leak.

Joe