Hinge Slots

What is your method of cutting hinge slots?

What type hinges do you use?

A Great Planes hinge slotting tool and Du-bro or Klett plastic hinges. Just did the flaps on a Fancy Pants. Tom Morris horns and ball links. Smooth as glass.

I machine the hinge slots out of the TE and LE of the flap on my mill prior to installing in the plane. Same for stab/elev. But I think the hinge machine thingy that Derek (mpa) posted awhile back was pretty cool.

Just did my first (successful) nylon, barrel-type hinge installation. I'll know if it was really successful in a few weeks, after the hinges don't pull out or fail.

The Great Planes "Slot Machine" is really nice.

Found a huge cache of Klett hinges on eBay a few weeks ago.

Gary,

I know this isn't exactly what you were asking, but..

Here's what I'm doing with the laser-cut Mo'Best. Instead of having to cut hinge slots, the spars are of laminated construction with 1/32" thick plywood in the center, and the hinge pockets are precut:

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You can easily implement a similar feature without the fancy laser cuts. It's a perfectly aligned center slot, no cutting required, and a very strong laminated spar to boot. (With laser cutting, I also include notches for the wing ribs..) Plus, you don't have to go find a straight stick for a spar!

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"Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm." -Winston Churchill

>Gary,
>
>I know this isn't exactly what you were asking, but..
>
>Here's what I'm doing with the laser-cut Mo'Best. Instead of
>having to cut hinge slots, the spars are of laminated
>construction with 1/32" thick plywood in the center, and the
>hinge pockets are precut:
>
>[photo not recovered: 4158ba2c5e15346f.jpg]
>
>[photo not recovered: 4158ba6a5e5fa349.jpg]
>
>You can easily implement a similar feature without the fancy
>laser cuts. It's a perfectly aligned center slot, no cutting
>required, and a very strong laminated spar to boot. (With
>laser cutting, I also include notches for the wing ribs..)
>Plus, you don't have to go find a straight stick for a spar!
>
>Larry can I borrow that method from you. I know you posted it with the purpose of being used, but I like to ask fellow stunters before I mooch their stuff.

Hey, I stole it from someone! (Tom Morris, as I recall..)

[photo not recovered: 3e69bb3870f12ad5.jpg]

"A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free." -Nikos Kazantzakis

A friend of mine told me about a manual hinge slotter that works great but I can't find one and don't want to buy the electric one to do just one plane. I'm just gona' cut a slot with a #11 blade and jam the hinge in there with some epoxy.

X-acto (I thnk it's X-acto) makes a sort of forked end blade with another blade that has a hooked end. These along with a plastic guide thing make up their version of a hinge slot cutter. You hook up the plastic guide, push the forked blade through the guide then used the little hooked blade to pick out the scrap balsa in the slot. I used this system for years before going to other methods.

DuBro, Goldberg, Fourmost, Great Planes, and Harry Higley all have hinging tools of one kind or another. I think Central Hobbies also sells an imported tool for centering the slots. A Dremel tool in a router table and a saw blade will work, too. Randy, I think this is the one you mentioned:

http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXE230&P=7

KD,

Looks like the same idea, though mine fit in a No.3 X-acto handle. But it's the same idea.

LAST EDITED ON Sep-28-04 AT 08:54 PM (CDT)
 
Well that #11 blade thing sure didn't work.

Thanks for the link, I'm getting the Dubro hinge slotter (LXE229) and #2 X-acto knife handle (LXKY73).

Hi

I recently tried a new (to me) technique to hing a flap.
I am fairly happy with it but did have some difficulty that I think will be overcome next time around. I expect it has good potential.

Basically the wing is 6 mm thick at the hinge. I sandwiched a fine open weave ribbon between 3mm hard balsa strips to form a long narrow cloth hinge. Seems to be very strong and flexable with very little slop. Forms a full length sealed hinge. I built the flap onto this with very light balsa, grain aligned across the hinge and glued the other side of the hinge to the wing then shaped the flap.

The difficulty was that I didn't build it quite straight but with some tweaking it opperates quite well now. The flap is quite large, 25% of wing area and seems to be stable tortionally rigid and free from warp due to the cross grain layout. There is a very hard 3mm balsa strip along at the TE as well.

I think I'll be using this method again.

My two preferred methods have been mentioned already, but I'll comment because I think they are the best ways.

I feel the absolute best way is what Larry is doing; building trailing edges and leading edges with built in slots. Not only does it yield perfect slots, but the leading and trailing edges are stiffer as well. They have been doing this in RC Scale forever. It's nothing new, but not too many people seem to do it.

The other method is the Great Planes hinge slotter. Possibly the single best tool designed specifically for our hobby/sport.

Randy,

I looked for a picture of Derek's *Really Cool* adaptation of the GP electric hinge slotter, cannot find it. Don't think he ever posted it, actually.

And don't care too much. Derek bought a new one of these things for me, *and* shipped it along with the jigging/alignment device he designed. So I can look at it any time I want.

(I have done nothing at all to deserve the friends I have, but there it is.)

While this unit could, I suppose, be described with the written word, and I will try, good pictures would help a lot. And they won't come from me, because the technology in not within my mental grasp.

Derek installed four (4) 6-32 nylon screws in one side of tool housing. Or is it three (3), two (2) in front, one (1) to the rear? Alas...

These screws function as stand-offs, as they can be run in and out serve nicely to both hold tool above base and to offer a wide range of adjustment.

The base is simply dense particle board. On two sides and intersecting at ninety (90) degrees there is a guide/fence with one being just short enough to allow a platform of sorts to be incorporated.

This description kinda sucks, but in practice tool is laid on its side with stand-offs on base. Balsa piece to be hinged is laid flat on platform. Tool is indexed to fence, cutting head pushed into the work.

Fabulous adaptation of what I personally regard as a slightly flawed tool and concept.

Don't nobody be asking for more details. Above is my best shot...

Larry,

You wascally wabbit, I tried just that trick a few years ago and with a built-up stabilizer for an Impact. Only I took Full Monty approach, running strips of 1/32" ply around entire perimeter of surface, idea being to have an accurate reference for carving to shape, a hard point to minimize damage. And I used pretty narrow strips to do this.

Weighed a ton. More accurately, it was going to weigh quite a lot more than a per-plans stab I had built the night before.

To each his own, and I hope you are gathering all the intuitively-correct ideas in your shop, as I have been trying to get rid of many for years.