Hinge Glue

[Essef]

HI All

Refitting some new hinges and gave the topic a little thought being a noob , with such a tight fit and not much of an aperture to get glue in whats the best method and glue to use .

I have both balsa cement and epoxy ,but think epoxy would be a waste as i cant inject and i'll lose most of it when inserting the hinge ,whilst i could syringe/inject the BC once the hinge is in place.

Stephen

[Plummet]

There are various sorts of hinge, and you do not say what you are using.

Some of the hinge materials you can buy are mylar sheet, with some furry fibre on the surfaces. These are designed to be used with cyano glues. You are reccomended to wick very runny cyano glue into the hinge slot with the hinge in place, and the furry stuff slurps it up and sticks.

There are little bottles of "hinge glue" available. I do not like using cyano, and have used this. It looks like yellowish PVA glue - very like aliphatic glue. I have found this good.

You can use epoxy. Smear the mix on the hinge and push it in. If you cal fill the slot with it first, all the better.

Lots of people recommend pinning the hinges, that is, drilling through the wood and hinge, and gluing bits of cocktail stick in the holes.

Hope this helps.

Plummet

[Alan Cantwell]

this needs a sticky somewhere, but here we go again

with fibre hinges, these are best glues with cyno thin, cut the slot, drill down the middle with a 2-3mm drill, this is the whick the glue in hole,

draw a centre line on the hinge, stick a pin through the middle, the pencil line is for you to line up the hinge to the centre line, the pin is to stop it going beyond the centre line,

put the hinge in the slot, whick the cyno down the hole, DONT use too much, it must not get on the exposed side that is ready to insert into the mating control surface,

let it set, then slide in the control surface onto the protruding hinges, bend the surface back, and whick cyno into the whick hole in the control surface, job done, go have a brew

[Alan Cantwell]

with mylar strip hinges, cut the strip to length sand the surface to key it for the glue, do the pin in the middle thing from above, smear with epoxy, slide in, then drill through, and peg with a cocktail stick,

but we arnt going to use this old fashioned rubbish are we?

[Alan Cantwell]

with pinhinges, aka Kavan leaf and pin hinges, cut the slots, prefferably using an alignment jig, i aso find a hinge slotter good for this, dubro do a nice hand held one, mines powered, cos i am posh,

at the top of the slots in both the wing and control surface, cut the edges os the slot at an angle, this is to take the knuckle of the hinge,

grease the hinge point, this is to keep the glue out of the pin,

this type of hinge has 4 holes in each leaf, these are the glue retaining holes, and do NOT need any further retention, aka pegging with cocktail sticks

using 30 minuts epoxy, apply a liberal amount to ONE hinge half, shove it home, wipre away the surplus glue with a cloth, the wet epoxy can be removed with meths, when dry, glue all the hinges, push the control surface onto the hinges wipe away, job done,

[Alan Cantwell]

using Robart pin hinges, these are superb hinges for the scale buff, and general model, but MUST be installed properly, its simple drill a hole, and slip the hinge in, ensuring all in line, and square and straight, but they MUST have a hefty block to sink into, i use 12 minute epoxy, on foam wings, you MUST glue in a balsa dowel, and drill into this, these hinges have NO strentgh when glued into just foam, these hinges are simply the best out there,

[Engine Doctor]

All of above or you can also try Polyureathane Glue for the robart hinges . Sold as Gorilla glue and various other brands it foams and expands filling any gaps , sets in about twenty mins and cures overnight. when fully cured any glue that has expanded out of the wood can be scraped off .Well worth a try and works very well with foam wings even if the holes are a bit sloppy.

[Essef]

Heres the hinges i purchased

And i used cyno with a wicking hole as suggested, thanks for all your advise it does make the job easier and boosts nooby confidence when coming from seasoned modellers.

Stephen

Edited By Biggles' Elder Brother - Moderator on 14/03/2012 12:28:42

[Biggles' Elder Brother - Moderator]

Essef,

please do not paste URL's into posts - instead use the linking method described in the tutorials. Simply pasting in URL's causes serious disruption to the forum's page formating.

Thanks

BEB

[Martin Harris - Moderator]

Don't want to worry you too much but I witnessed an aileron departing from a fairly large Seagull Edge 540 on its maiden at the weekend. It was using the supplied fuzzy hinges and was assembled by a very experienced modeller.

The control surfaces' security, linkages, gaps etc. were comprehensively checked by an equally experienced modeller (and Area Chief Examiner) prior to flight and the model was being flown normally (i.e. not diving under power). The model returned to the field without further incident but the aileron was never found.

What was a little worrying was that the cyano had only adhered to the aileron over about 20% or less of the surface area of the hinge (as witnessed by the balsa adhering to them) despite access holes being drilled as in the advice above.

Scarily, and as a testament to the power of flutter, I noticed that there was damage to the leading edge sheeting and movement at the spar in that area so the owner will need to do some fairly major investigaitve work on the underlying structure. Also, the remaining aileron had obviously been subject to flutter as despite a close fitting hinge line gap, the inboard (of 4) hinge was lying on the top surface of the aileron having come right out of its slot! There was little or no movement when attempting to flex the aileron with any reasonable force.

Bottom line is that if you are using these hinges, particularly on a larger/faster model, I'd still recommend pinning as a worthwhile precaution. There is no way that you can check the coverage and the adhesion of the cyano - if the slot is not tight enough against the hinge the capillary action will not necessarily distribute the glue properly, for example.

[Essef]

My apologies BeB ,ill read that tut later thanks.

Thanks for the info Martin i'll ensure all hinges are pinned, i have an air stapler with "brads" would this suffice do you think ? ,perhaps a test on scrap prior to destroying the wings is in order !.

Stephen