Originally Posted by
Andrew R Stewart
The jig makes the set up, mitering, tacking much faster and easier but my, not so great, brazing still is the biggest factor controling the resulting alignment (prior to final aligning).
I'm sure your brazing is fine, but this was a point I wanted to make earlier. A builder can have the straightest jig and the best fitting miters in the world, and the builder can still end up with a pretzel if their brazing technique is off. That's why I try to talk people into wasting a lot of tubing, filler and gas getting the brazing under control before they build a frame. And if they can somehow manage to get Doug Fattic to teach them brazing, so much the better.
I sometimes say I've built frames without a jig, but I have always had a way to hold the BB shell to the seat tube. Everything after that requires sighting and measuring, usually over and over.