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Tip: Drilling hinges

RudiGreyling

Well Known Member
Here's something I came up with today, it might help you.

I had to drill the hinges to the flaps. The instructions says: "keep the hinge pin in, since it keeps the hinge straight." But with the pin in, you can't clamp the hinge to the skin, since the hinge eye is away from the skin and you have to get over it, in order to clamp it tight to the skin. So you have to manufacture some kind of spacer, or use "C" clecko clamps which I do not have.

1) Mark a straight line on the hinge with a fine point sharpie where you need to drill to give you the clearance, check your plans (this case 1/4")
2) Take an ordinary yarstick and rip it lengthwise in 2 using a stanley knife.
3) Sandwich the ripped yardstick between clamp and the hinge.
4) This will give you just enough clearence for the clamp to clear the hing eye.
5) Align the hinge looking through the skin holes onto the lines you drew.
6) The yardstick underneath will also give you the required support when drill from the top through the hinge.
7) Clecko as you drill


flap_hinge_1.jpg

Here you can see the top view, notice the thin blue line in the holes where the hinge is aligned.

flap_hinge_2.jpg

Close up side view, shows the yardstick sandwiched giveing the right clearance for the clamp

flap_hinge_3.jpg

This picture also shows the fine line on the hinge for alignment through the top holes.

flap_hinge_4.jpg

The Bottom view

Cheap and simple way to straight and easy hing drilling...Enjoy

Kind Regards
Rudi
 
Last edited:
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