flares are very easy. Don't get the expensive flaring tool that takes a wrench and can put a flare in stainless; you'll DESTROY an aluminum thread with it if you don't have experience with them.
The simple cheap flaring tools that spruce sells are just fine, use light fingertip pressure to flare it, and stop when it starts to get just a wee bit stiff. You want to form the flare, not smash it into submission. 3003 tubing is very soft and flares with very little pressure.
Also, don't jump on the armchair-engineering bandwagon and start changing out tubing for more expensive, less ductile tubing. It'll be harder to bend, harder to flare, and easier to CRACK. There are places on the airplane where the flexible tubing is designed to give a little bit, like the way that the plans have you use a loop of tubing at the wheel rather than a flex line. If you use stiffer tubing than per plan, I'd anticipate a higher failure rate than the soft tubing due to vibration cracking. Van's design is well thought out and well field-proven.
Use a paste thread sealant on pipe threads (personally I use loctite 567 teflon paste). Don't use tape (which you seem to already know). DON'T use sealant or lubricant on the threads or the taper of a flared fitting. Torque isn't rocket science either; vans recommends hand tight plus a quarter turn, and that's perfectly adequate. The point is that it's a SMALL amount of torque. It's enough to keep the B-nut from backing off, but not enough to deform the flare.
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Ian
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