Tube Mitering

Ye olde Harbor Freight , a great place to pick up this Pipe/Tube Mitering Jig. Normally you can get it on sale for $39. Not bad as I’ve seen other places selling the same article and charging $80.

One thing to be aware of, you must have a drill press that allows 14” between the chuck and base. If you’ve got one of those little 12” bench top models there won’t be enough room to fit this to the press. However, you can replace the pipe that supports everything on the press with a longer one to increase the distance and mount the jig.

Set of bi-metal holes saws purchased with the jig. Lack of instructions with the kit lead me to ruin the first two saws, I’d been running them at 3200rpm. Searching the net I found these are to be run at no more than 300rpm. The bottom end of the range on my press was 600rpm. Advice from a couple pro frame builders was to cut down through the tube a little slower and stay heavy with the oil at 600rpm.

Tubemiter.exe

I downloaded this free program after several people had commented on how well it worked for them. I’ll give it a thumbs up also! I used it instead of the jig on the last couple of builds. It cost nothing, it takes a fraction of the time to setup and make the cut and it doesn’t sling oil everywhere. The program couldn’t be simpler. It will ask you to fill in 4 pieces of data.

The program will draw out a pattern to be sent to the printer to create a template. Cut out the template and wrap it around the tube taping the edges together squarely. At this point some people cut, grind or file the shape. I trace the pattern directly to the tube, remove the template and cut the pattern using a dremel with a small cutoff wheel. It allows me to follow the pattern exactly leaving less chaff than a hole saw around the edges of the cut to be cleaned up by light filing. The program can be downloaded from http://www.ihpva.org/tools - which has a list of cool utilities. http://www.ihpva.org/tools/tubemit3.html is the documentation for it.