Hatz Biplane Association

A comment on flashback arresters,here in Aussie they are on the hand piece and the gauges as well but they tend to make the hand piece a bit heavy and unwieldy. Cheers Ross

That looks like a worthwhile addition to any airplane builders tool box!

I would suggest you think about a grit type hole saw for thin wall tubing, .035" - .062". The large teeth on a standard hole saw will catch and possibly jam or bend the thin wall tube. This because you are feeding the saw through the material by hand and will not be able to control the very slow feed speed needed.

I have these mounted in a drill press fish-mouth type tube cutter, they work great.

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I'd also would recommend sitting in on the Tin Man's (aka Kent White) Oshkosh forums. Just remember that he sometimes can have an humorously abrasive sense of humor when asked a question. Don't take it personally. I've met him at Brodhead and he really is a nice fellow. He's phenominal with sheet aluminum! After my first Kent White forum, I went home and ordered the Mecco Midget and began an entirely new appreciation for welding!

Tin Man Tech (where you get the meco midget) has a great video about cutting and welding aircraft fusealges from tubing. They talk alot about how one builder will carefully notch out every tube with a tube notcher, make the fits perfect and then weld them, while another will cut them with snips, grind and weld them. In the end they are identical except for the fact that the snips guy was finished two months earlier. :) In my experience, tube notching is preferred if you're TIG welding. OA welding can fill in wider gaps so the tight precision is not required. Hope that's useful. The video is great in many ways if you're welding your first fuselage. I highly recommend it.

Nick

I used snips on several of my tubes as well. I only did it on .035 wall tubing and certainly need to work on my technique, but it came out ok. For me, I found it was easier to "rough" cut the tube with the snips and finish it on the grinder... I'm not as good as the guy @ OSH. ;) I also found that in certain cases the snips were easier that the hole saw.

Hi Hatzers,
I made my first fuselage before the joint cutters were available. I followed Tony's books and used a bench grinder with a wheel dressed round. Shortly after tacking the entire fuselage I was at Oshkosh and watched in amazement as someone was making a fuse fitting the tubes with an aviation snips. He never had to go to a machine tool and back to the frame. He said a pair of snips lasts for about one fuselage. His joints fitted up well enough, but not as perfectly as with the holesaw method. The tubing he was cutting had a .035 wall.
Just something to consider.
Al

No problem. I am not currently using those, but I should be. I plan on buying the ones that install at the torch.

Doug, your answers are much appreciated.
I hope you don't mind one more for today:
Are you using flashback arrestors or check valves with your Meco, and if so - are they attached to the torch or to the other end of the hose, at the regulator?
Thanks again.

I am using the Meco. I usually used the #2 tip for clusters and the #1 for simple two-piece joints like a rudder pedal. I may have used the #3 for one or two big clusters, but I don't recall offhand. The #3 can put out a lot of heat if you aren't careful. Start small and work up in tip size... it's easier than blowing a hole in the tubing right at the start because your initial choice was too big.

Get some scrap tubing (i used some thin wall 3/4 tubing from Home Depot) to experiment with. Make a few clusters to get a feel for how to weld them and how much heat you need and where you need it. Doing that helped me a lot.