Drilling out hinge points

[kork]

I was looking for another way to remove hinge points and ran across an idea from a thread I was reading.
It works rather well. I stopped by my local hobby shop and picked up a piece of brass tubing and
after a couple runs on the belt sander and a Xacto knife for the inside radius edge.
We had ourselves a awesome cutting device.
Super smooth in and out and it removed all points without any problems.
Try it...

 

[BalsaDust]

Looks to work well.

 

[Bartman]

thanks for the photos. learning to pull the hinges and redo flying surfaces helps to make a lot of beat up old airplanes flyable! and i love old airplanes!

 

[dhal22]

Great idea.

 

[TnAeroNut]

Aren't the new holes quite a bit bigger than the old holes? How do you fill the gap when you put the new hinges in?

 

[Bipeguy03]

That is really the only way to do it.


When I rebuilt my Trueworthy Pitts, I cut the hinges off with the dremel, but because I was recovering it I just beveled what was left of the hinge down and then filled in any voids with balsa putty.

I will say I learned with my Pitts that Gorilla Glue is a PAIN IN THE @$$ to remove without damaging the balsa!

 

[Bipeguy03]

Aren't the new holes quite a bit bigger than the old holes? How do you fill the gap when you put the new hinges in?

The trick is to make sure to use the correct size tubing, can't think of the right size off hand but the last time I did it the new hinges fit great.

They aren't quite as tight as brand new holes but they aren't loose enough to cause problems.

 

[BalsaDust]

Or if you have to drill the holes out to 1/4" glue s piece of dowel in the hole sand and drill a new hold next to it.

 

[Bartman]

Aren't the new holes quite a bit bigger than the old holes? How do you fill the gap when you put the new hinges in?

i used a size smaller than what it looks like Kork used in his photos. if you clip what's left of the hinge point off then the smaller size tube will still get the hinge without taking as much wood. just see what the smallest tube is that a new hinge will slide into and go with that. then you don't end up having to use as much epoxy to fill the gaps.

 

[pawnshopmike]

Or if you have to drill the holes out to 1/4" glue s piece of dowel in the hole sand and drill a new hold next to it.

What Chris said works great. Been there done that.

And yes the brass tube trick is the easiest and best method I have found.