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I don’t understand the Jiggernaut. I would think that if you had the necessary tools and skills to build a bicycle frame, then making a jig would be a trivial part of the process.
As an amateur framebuilder, I can shed a bit of light on that. The jig is a fascination of those who have not yet built a frame, but want to. They see it as a necessity and as a huge obstacle, as the cheapest commercially-made jigs cost over $1000 US. While a person with tools can make a passable jig, or just build without one, being able to buy one for a few hundred dollars would be hugely appealing to a large segment of the novice frame builder market
I agree with Fred. I’d also say that it has less to do with skills and tools than with inclination – making a frame is fun and exciting, making a jig is less so. On top of that, even the simplest passable, versatile DIY solution for a frame jig costs about $200 in materials alone.
(http://www.instructables.com/id/The-simplest-bicycle-framebuilding-jig-I-could-com/)
If the Jiggernaut costs $300 for an out-of-the-box solution, that saves hours of labour and allows you to get straight to the fun stuff.
Building a jig is trivial, building a good jig is somewhat less so. Getting good at building jigs is a trial and error process and can easily result in a few botched frames. For a beginner, it’s probably best to start with something that’s definitely going to work.
Oh, I get you Art. So you’re saying buying a jig is more about the baked-in design logic, than strictly a physical thing to hold the parts in place. Kind of a hardware manifestation of best practices. That makes sense. I’ve always made the tooling for any project myself, but I can understand the value of that.
Part of it is design logic, though part of it is still strictly physical. I’m sure if you’ve made a lot of tooling yourself, you understand the importance of having a good first surface. It’s hard to make a jig with any real precision when you’re using your driveway as a reference plane.