A Notch In Time, page 2 of 4

The Williams notcher is ready to use right out of the box. "It's got two slots in it and you just bolt right through them to the side of your welding table," says Williams. "Or, I've made a fixture that is two pegs on a bar that goes in our vice to hold the notcher. That's the way we do it in our own shop."

The Mitler Brothers also offer a tubing notcher that shears the tubing, but unlike the Williams model, this one is designed to be powered by a 4-ton Porta Power ram.

The other style of notcher for Saturday night guys is offered by many different companies. This fixture supports a mandrel for a hole saw and a clamp to hold the tube. You need at least a 1/2-inch drill or suitable drill press to power the saw.

Nearly every company that offers this type of notcher claims to have invented it. George Barnes from Tubular Dynamics believes he knows why. "I think everybody who plays with cars at one time or another digs out the hole saw and tries to jury rig it somehow in a vice on a drill press," says Barnes. "If you get everything tied down tight enough and located right, it works good and there's been a lot of tubing notched that way.

"Of course, it's time consuming to get it in the right place and at the right angle and centered up and all that sort of thing. I, like everyone else, had done that, so I knew there was potential."

Dave Williams' Lowbuck Tools tubing notcher shears the tube. To demonstrate how fool-proof it is, we found a guy named Dizzy to try it. He came away unhurt and with a good notch.

However notchers got here, they've become popular and for good reason. What used to take half an hour now takes 30 seconds, or less.

Barnes sent us one of his notchers to try and gave us these simple instructions: "Clamp the Jig-A-Joint in a drill press vice or bolt it to the table. If you don't have a drill press, you can clamp it down to a table or vice and use a half-inch drill to power it.

"Use a hole saw that is the diameter you're joining to. Say it's a 1-3/4-inch roll bar and you're using 1-inch body mounts. Well, use a 1-3/4-inch hole saw. That way you'll get a good fit."

We tried it, and less than a minute later we had a gap-free fit. (be sure to read notes on page 4 about gap-free fits)

Most hole saw notchers have an adjustable clamp for cutting at an angle. We found the Jig-A-Joint to be accurate and it makes notching a tube that will be welded at an angle nearly as quick and easy as a simple 90-degree installation. The maximum angle most notchers are able to cut is 45 degrees.

Some companies advertise their notchers will work up to 60 degrees, but that's not possible on larger diameter tubes. "On smaller diameters, those drastic angles will work, but you better be pretty close where you position that thing on 2-inch diameters, even at 45 degrees. You need to just barely nip the top of it and take most of it off the bottom to be able to get all the way through."

The limits are because of the saw, not the notcher. "You run out of travel up inside the hole saw. If you tried to do a 60-degree notch, the tube would bottom out inside. To keep people from getting in trouble, we limit our fixture to 45 degrees."

Barnes agrees. "If they made longer hole saws, it'd be fine," he says. "On smaller diameters, like 1-inch, you can get away with bigger angles, but they are indicating that you can do that on all diameters up to 2-inch, and you can't."

Phil Peters of Pro Tools says his company's notcher is able to make that kind of cut with an extra step. "Once you get past 30 degrees, you have to cut the tubing at the angle you want," says Peters. "If you want a 50-degree angle, you need to cut your tubing at 50 degrees and then notch it. The sharper the angle you cut at, the longer the pass. The tool will pick up so much scrap it won't go all the way through. So you need to reduce that by cutting at the angle you need and then notching it."

Hole Saw Notcher 2 Many companies offer two levels of hole saw notchers. The RTN 1000 (left) and RTN 100 are both from Dale Wilch Sales. Like all top-of-the-line models, the more expensive RTN 1000 features sturdier construction and an adjustable foot for precise alignment with the drill press.

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