Originally Posted by
SamHall
Every time I see someone mention tubing notchers and building bike frames, it's always negative. Not precise, have to be aligned/shimmed, won't hold thin tubes tight enough without crimping, etc.
+3 for the vise, block, and file method. You can hand cope a tube just as fast or faster than you can set up a notcher, mill, whatever.
A mill would be nice to have for other things though...think of the stuff you could make!
agreed.. a mill would be useful for sure. and you're right about the setup and actual mitering taking just as long or longer than hand-mitering. a mill could be nice because once you had something set up you could make that same cut a bunch of times (i.e. small scale production, or whatever). it would also be handy for those quick 90º miters that could be done by hand pretty easily too. maybe it would shave off a little time. imo not worth the cost unless you are larger scale and/or also use a mill for other stuff, like machining your own jigs or fixtures.
good point on the crimping thin-wall tubes thing. i asked eastwood about that awhile ago but i doubt they realized quite how thin i was talking about. also i think if you could do all your miters by machine for under $300 it would have caught on by now. seems like these tubing notchers are not worth the headache.