To cut! ..... or not to cut?

[Bil4381]

aircraft spruce sell a fixture, which goes on a drill press. You clamp the tube in the fixture which itself is clamped to the table of the drillpress.
I bought a HSS holesaw to drill the ends of the tubing. Use a metal tray, cookie sheet to catch the coolant. You need coolant for cutting chromoly, or the holesaw is burned in no time.
FWIW, I also had some welding done by an aerospace welder. he is coded. he uses an angle grinder (carefully) to notch the ends of the tubing. I think he had a cutoff wheel installed, but used that wheel for all the notching too.

 

[subnoize1]

Racegunz, Home Depot sells the best aviation snips for around $30 which gives you the left, right and straight snips. I can cope a tube in less than 30 seconds for shallow cuts like 90 degrees and less that 60 seconds for more extreme angles. That said, it took me some time to learn how. It was a lot of trial and error but once I got good at it the total time to cut and tack both side of the fuselage was less than 4 hours. The two sides tacked with cross members to longer because I was measuring and squaring everything but it was about another 3 hours tops both coping and tacking.

 

[bobthebuilder]

Four hours .... Wow!
Took me about four days per side.
(Not that it's a race)

 

[subnoize1]

Now that I know "close enough" works better than perfect I could cut, cope and tack the fuselage minus the seats and horizontal stabilizer in about 4 hours tops. I kick myself for trying to make the joints fit before welding. The best welds are where I made the biggest mistakes and had the largest gaps in the joints.

Then again, I am using Oxygen Acetylene! You TIG guys have your work cut out for you! Sure, tiny welds are cute but you have 10 times the work to get it to that point than a OA guy does...