# cutting a head tube by hand?



## febikes (Jan 28, 2011)

I need to cut a head tube to length but I don't have a lathe.

I need the head tube to have good faces so it will position properly when I place it in my bike stand.

Can I simply rough cut and then clamp the tube in the shop stand and use the the park HTR-1B headset facing tool to face the tube? I think I can get reasonably close with rough cutting and some work with a file.

I know this would be a non-traditional use of the park HTR-1B tool and may mean more cutting wear on the teeth but it would save the cost of buying a lathe in the short term.


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## HomeGrownSS (Jan 18, 2006)

i have done it that exact way. its not a problem.


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## Mr.SBC (Dec 18, 2006)

When I cut my headtubes I get it as close as I can by hand, then take it to the local bike shop and they face it for me for free. Ive never had a problem


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## Francis Buxton (Apr 2, 2004)

I cut it as square as I can get it with a hacksaw, and they I go around it with a machinists square (similar to the picture HomeGrownSS linked), and hand file it until it is a close to perfectly square as I can get it. You can get really close by hand, and only have a little taken off after construction when you ream/face it.


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## febikes (Jan 28, 2011)

Thanks Francis, that was the exact process I was planning. It is good to know that I don't need to buy a lathe for this operation. I plan to buy the ream/face tool and am deciding between the park, strawberry, and other options on the market. I want to have the capability to ream/face without going to the local bike shop each time.


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## Francis Buxton (Apr 2, 2004)

It's hard to justify the tooling if you aren't building too many bikes. Eventually it's on my list, as I am a tool junky (as you sound to be), but I can get it faced/reamed for $40 or less at the local shop. Hard to justify $400 in tooling if I build a bike or so a year. There is definitely something to be said for the convenience of owning your own tooling, but don't let "equipment lust" deter you from the goal.


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## Schmitty (Sep 7, 2008)

If you chucked up a 'squared by hand' ht straight in a 4 jaw and indicated the edge for squareness, you would see that it wouldn't be close to square.. at least not as I define square which is either by proper ht facing with dedicated facer, or much better yet, a lathe. Just sayin.

I've done quite a bit of 'investigation' into this kind of thing. Amazing how unsquare some facers and/or facing techniques can render a headtube. The attitude is (understandably), hey I faced it with fancy tools, gotta be good. With centering cones and facers, I've gotten the best results flipping/facing small amounts repeatedly. Cuts too large, no fluid, not cleaning out chips, old cutters, not removing ht burs, etc etc will all throw accuracy out the window.. kind of alarming once you start digging into it.

Of course at some point, the show must go on, and that beautiful lathe faced ht gets all knackered from welding, and the facing tool becomes the only way to go (facing in the lathe after a frame is done is more for speed.. may be a bit more accurate that a beat old facer, but there's no 4 jaw /single point accuracy involved anymore).

If I was lopping off ht stock in a Park guide, I would invest in one of the little and cheap surface plates, and a good fixed straight edge. Maybe a bit of Dykem to use to spot surface irregularities. A scribe could then be used to scrribe two parallel lines on the ht as guides when starting the process.

-Schmitty-


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## jay_ntwr (Feb 15, 2008)

Schmitty said:


> With centering cones and facers, I've gotten the best results flipping/facing small amounts repeatedly. Cuts too large, no fluid, not cleaning out chips, old cutters, not removing ht burs, etc etc will all throw accuracy out the window.. kind of alarming once you start digging into it


Makes a ton of sense. I do this when woodworking all the time but can't think why I never thought to do this on a HT. Great advice.

Now this doesn't make sense to me:



Schmitty said:


> facing in the lathe after a frame is done is more for speed..


Post a picture of that!


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## Schmitty (Sep 7, 2008)

Here you go. That Soulcraft vid has some shots of it too.

-Schmitty-

ps Carl Strong from his web site.


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## jay_ntwr (Feb 15, 2008)

Schmitty said:


> Here you go. That Soulcraft vid has some shots of it too.
> 
> -Schmitty-
> 
> ps Carl Strong from his web site.


Gotcha, so the cutter is in the chuck, not the frame? I was envisioning a gap bed lathe with a production frames spinning around at 300 RPM and obviously, that made no sense to me.


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## Schmitty (Sep 7, 2008)

Check that.

Looks scary as hell to me... if the cutter caught...


-Schmitty-


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## swift (Apr 3, 2007)

Yeah, no thanks on that method!
I love the loose fitting, long sleeves.

Live long and prosper brother Strong.


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## bobbotron (Nov 28, 2007)

Schmitty said:


> Check that.
> 
> Looks scary as hell to me... if the cutter caught...
> 
> -Schmitty-


Would one suddenly find oneself being beaten by one's frame?


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## Walt (Jan 23, 2004)

*Good points*

But let's not scare anyone. The whole point of facing the head tube is to A) make it fit squarely/straight in the fixture when building the frame, and B) make the headset fit and function correctly. Hand tools (used as described in earlier posts) are adequate for both tasks.

I would also be terrified to put a finished frame in a lathe like that. Sheesh. Hand cutters are not that much work- and if something binds, it's easy to stop. Then again, I imagine Carl knows what he's doing!

-Walt



Schmitty said:


> If you chucked up a 'squared by hand' ht straight in a 4 jaw and indicated the edge for squareness, you would see that it wouldn't be close to square.. at least not as I define square which is either by proper ht facing with dedicated facer, or much better yet, a lathe. Just sayin.
> 
> I've done quite a bit of 'investigation' into this kind of thing. Amazing how unsquare some facers and/or facing techniques can render a headtube. The attitude is (understandably), hey I faced it with fancy tools, gotta be good. With centering cones and facers, I've gotten the best results flipping/facing small amounts repeatedly. Cuts too large, no fluid, not cleaning out chips, old cutters, not removing ht burs, etc etc will all throw accuracy out the window.. kind of alarming once you start digging into it.
> 
> ...


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## Alliance Bicycles (Jul 19, 2009)

It's not scary once you've done it. On Carl's setup, the belt slips on the pulley before it pulls the frame down. Even then, it's hard to get the cutter to bind (read: maybe if you feed a ti frame way too fast, never happened with steel). Once you try it, you wouldn't do it with hand tools again.


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## jay_ntwr (Feb 15, 2008)

Alliance Bicycles said:


> It's not scary once you've done it. On Carl's setup, the belt slips on the pulley before it pulls the frame down. Even then, it's hard to get the cutter to bind (read: maybe if you feed a ti frame way too fast, never happened with steel). Once you try it, you wouldn't do it with hand tools again.


Yeah, I used to run some really big taps in the lathe with the tap in the part, the live center in the tailstock in the end of the tap, and a 15" adjustable wrench in one hand and my other hand on the clutch to start it before moving it to the tailstock to keep the tap centered. It wasn't that big of a deal, but I was a lot younger then.


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## CurbDestroyer (Mar 6, 2008)

I've cut all mine by hand, then filed the faces square. With a little patience you can just about get them perfect, if not to the point of diminishing returns compared to the price of the reaming facing tools. If you can hand file tight miters, then you can keep it flat.


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## jfdupuis (Sep 10, 2009)

How do you guide your HT on the lathe? For the BB, like in Soul Craft video, there is threaded inserts that can be placed to ensure alignment and perpendicularity. How do you ensure that both surfaces are parallel when you flip the frame to face the other side ?


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## bee (Apr 7, 2008)

Ok. Yeah, but what about taking a couple inches off an extended head tube on an already built frame?


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## edoz (Jan 16, 2004)

jfdupuis said:


> How do you guide your HT on the lathe? For the BB, like in Soul Craft video, there is threaded inserts that can be placed to ensure alignment and perpendicularity. How do you ensure that both surfaces are parallel when you flip the frame to face the other side ?


I've used a bull nose live center a couple of times. It was a bit sketchy, but I made it work ok. I'm considering an expanding internal mandrel mounted to the tailstock.


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## Blaster1200 (Feb 20, 2004)

bee said:


> Ok. Yeah, but what about taking a couple inches off an extended head tube on an already built frame?


You'll need to remove the fork and headset first. :thumbsup:


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## jeff (Jan 13, 2004)

bee said:


> Ok. Yeah, but what about taking a couple inches off an extended head tube on an already built frame?


Post #29 
http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=481911&highlight=carbon+yeti


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## laksboy (Sep 4, 2007)

Good thread. I just got my hands on an old long travel Ventana Tandem with a 5.5" long headtube... With external cups, the stack height is 5 mm over that of the maximum 167mm stackheight for a 2017 RS Boxxer with "tall" upper crown. There is approximately 9 mm of lower headtube available to be trimmed before I hit the weld which obviously I want to stay out of. I'll need to verify the headtube isn't butted, but I doubt it since it is massiely externally reinforced. Since it's a tandem, and I'll be upping travel from 170-200mm, I'm not too worried about small changes in head angle which is fairly steep anyways by current standards.

My fallback option is to send it back to Ventana to swap out to a tapered headtube. I'll probably end up doing this anyways, but I'd like to have a few more data points on "how it rides" before I do that and have him weld in the new headtube at 6X? degrees.

All that to say, seems like a competnent machinist could do this easy and if I can find a local shop with a facing tool for the final touchup, I could do it myself with a hacksaw and file and if I screw it up, well I was going to have to replace the headtube anyways...


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## laksboy (Sep 4, 2007)

area to be cut outlined faintly in red


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## VegasSingleSpeed (May 5, 2005)

It's aluminum, it's soft, and you're not cutting much off. I would be inclined to simply use the facing tool to cut that down.


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