Helpful Hints
by Jim Carpenter
Along the road of model building and flying I've picked up a few tricks. I hope the following will help beginners and experts alike.
1. Use a wheel collar on your drill bit and you have a depth gauge or drill stop.
2. When mixing epoxy a 50/50 mix is critical in order to gain maximum strength. Use a coin or bottle cap to trace two circles to place epoxy in equal amounts.
3. For epoxy mixing pads use flexible plastic, like butter container tops. After epoxy cures simply flex the plastic top and epoxy can be cleanly removed.
4. Craft sticks (popcycle sticks) at Hobby Lobby make great inexpensive epoxy mixing sticks. They make great shims for lining up wings and fuselages etc.; they are also good for repairs such as spar splices.
5.Use craft sticks on the top and bottom of the elevator along with clothes pins or rubber bands to hold elevator in neutral while setting up controls.
6. To cut brass, copper, or aluminum tubing; roll on flat hard surface with a sharp knife.
7. To clean planes use rubbing alcohol then shine covering with Armoral or Son of a Gun.
8. Use fuel line tubing on needle valves to seal from leaks.
9. To seperate backing on film covering put small pieces of tape on each side and then pull tape.
10. Baking soda and CA glue make great fillets for repairs.
11. Cut off the top of the fox needle valve leaving enough to solder a wheel collar on. This keeps the needle valve from being damaged on inverted landings.
Helpful Hints
by Jim Shamblin
1. If you paint in a screw lid jar, does it ever get stuck? Try putting a layer of teflon tape used by plumbers around the jar threads. If you take it off very often you will have to renew the teflon, but it is cheap and easy (like me).
2. At the craft store (Hobby Lobby) for a few bucks you can get a small flexible artist pallet (Norma Jeanne took me to a play and I got culture now) Use to help apply filler over nicks, scratches, etc. prior to painting.
3. For mixing epoxy, I use the small paper cups at fast food resturants that are supplied for catsup. Just grab a handful befoer you leave.
4. When making a trailing edge with 1/16" sheet, sometimes you need a lot of clamps, pins, etc to hold everything tight. I took some wooden clothespins, cut tounge depressors into about 2" lengths and glue them to the clothespins at the clamping end. This gives you a wide clamp that works really well on sheet balsa.
