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Hi Paul & John, A trick I use for accurate free hand cutting is using a sanding disc to knock off the heavy scale and then use a scratch awl for my lines. The line is very thin so it makes following lines very easy. Another is to stop cutting when you feel your hands or torch get out of balance. When that happens, stop and reposition the torch then continue cutting. The cleanest cut comes from a clean tip. After you clean all the orifice bores in the tip, fire up the torch and set flame for cutting, then depress the cutting lever and observe the flame. There should be a long very "uniform" inner flame cutting cone. If that inner cone is not "very" uniform then your cut will be ragged just like the flame cone is and the back of the metal will have slag. Reclean the center orifice until it's very uniform. A cut with a clean tip will have a very smooth cut surface with very little (if any) slag on the backside of the cut. If either one of these is not present reclean the tip. The center bore orifice can get deformed and the tip needs replaced or cut off. It's really important to hold the cleaning file straight in the bore hole and just removing enough material to clean the bore to make the tip last a long time. I've never used a new tip that was clean enough for cutting right out of the box. T_Bone
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