drill holes or cut slits in homemade MT manifolds?

[anday6]

The only way you will have any hope of drilling small holes by hand is to use a punch and use the dimple to guide the drill bit. And/or 'flatten' the tube a bit with a vise (or just by standing on a board on top of it it) to give a flat surface for drilling.

[spiderwrangler]

I have perforated stainless for my Igloo Ice Cube false bottom, but I once drilled holes in copper tubing to make a sprinkler arm. I can tell you that was a major pain. It is hard to get a drill bit to go straight into a small curved pipe/tube surface a few hundred times. The bit wants to deflect around the curve.

You'd probably want to use an auto center punch to give yourself a starting point to keep the bit from slipping around.

** D'oh, didn't see the above post...