I like Paragon flanged sliding dropouts but there are somethings about working with them that is frustrating. This is mostly a repeat of stuff on my blog but I hope sharing it here will be helpful to others and facilitate a discussion that will help me improve my process.
It starts with dropouts | Farnsworth Elemental
In particular, the miters is hard to get perfect. I have setup a fixture where I rough in the miter but I still end up needing to tune it. I want the sliders to be level when the frame is complete and in hindsight need to adjust the design of my fixture to support this. For now what I do is set it up close in the jig then work with a file to make it perfect. Redesigning the fixture will take time so if you have ideas and/or photos of your fixtures for this please let me know.
The way the flange is shaped the chainstay will not hold in place so in addition to the tight miter I need to steady things with one hand and then fusion tack with the other. I am not sure what others are doing but fusion tacks like this are stressful. I am thinking of a modification to my fixture to provide a way to hold this for the tack and/or setting up a dedicated JIG for making the tack on this.
The following is a crappy photo but, I like the look of these dropouts vs. the plate style ones.
In any case, thanks for looking and let me know if you have any comments or tips about working with these dropouts.
It starts with dropouts | Farnsworth Elemental
In particular, the miters is hard to get perfect. I have setup a fixture where I rough in the miter but I still end up needing to tune it. I want the sliders to be level when the frame is complete and in hindsight need to adjust the design of my fixture to support this. For now what I do is set it up close in the jig then work with a file to make it perfect. Redesigning the fixture will take time so if you have ideas and/or photos of your fixtures for this please let me know.

The way the flange is shaped the chainstay will not hold in place so in addition to the tight miter I need to steady things with one hand and then fusion tack with the other. I am not sure what others are doing but fusion tacks like this are stressful. I am thinking of a modification to my fixture to provide a way to hold this for the tack and/or setting up a dedicated JIG for making the tack on this.

The following is a crappy photo but, I like the look of these dropouts vs. the plate style ones.

In any case, thanks for looking and let me know if you have any comments or tips about working with these dropouts.