Does anyone use metal hinges for planes with less than .09 CID?

 Seems like I ran across an idea somewhere so I will not call it mine. I just don't know who to give credit to.

 That said, I saw a plan that showed how to fold over a piece of tin? or shim stock? over a piece of wire and bring the ends together flat to slide into a slot in the area to be hinged. Not so new of an idea? Maybe but it came to me that this could work on a really small scale. Smaller than you would expect.

 For the shim stock I propose to use a soda can. For the wire I was thinking an ordinary office staple. Or you might substitute a small diameter wire bent into a U shape.

 I have no staples on hand but plan on getting some to play with soon. Remember the Swingline Tot 50 stapler? I have one (but again no staples) Those are really small and light. I am probably going to have to go to Lincoln to get some of those. None around here.

Pros? Cons? You tell me!

 I think they would be plenty strong, light and could easily be slotted into a 1/16" sheet for nice solid hinges.

 Now for a better hinge you could use a small piece of aerosol straw such as you would find on a can of brake cleaner, carburetor cleaner or WD-40. This would eliminate any metal to metal contact.

This idea could be use to make a strip hinge as well using just one length of wire.

 To make installing the hinge a little easier you could shorten the mating surfaces and using 1/32"X 1/4"X length sheet and sandwich it in, no problem.

The poor drawing I did with Paint shows a crude example.

Robert

Metal hinges go way back in time. Jim Walker made some that were alum. and fitted over the stab. and elevator, Perfect made them to fit into a slot in the surfaces and the early ones had barbs in them so that they would not pull out. There were many more but i have already showed my age.
Larry

Cool. Got it now.  The only problem I see is keeping the staple from pulling out.  Perhaps an L bend of the staple legs and install them in a small slot with a drop of epoxi.  Looks like a cool ideal that I will play around with on my next project.  Also looks like music wire comes in .015 diameter. That may be small enough to bend your own U shapped hinge wire.  That way you could controll the hinge width and the leg length and shape.

Why would they not perform well? I suppose you'd have to pay special attention to alignment, but otherwise it looks like a sound idea.

Robert, you could also make them up without the staple, install them in both surfaces (staggered) and run a continuous wire through them.  Then the control surfaces would be removable.

I agree that the ones marketed were not ideal but if you took a little care by doing it yourself, you would have a better hinge.

Ray, your suggestion is in line with my mention of the strip type hinge in my first post. Making the wire removable is a great suggestion to go along with it.

This is why I posted the the idea here and while it may not be the best solution, does provide another way of doing something we need. The staples may not be the best idea but John Rist pointed out a nice solution.

The biggest problem I have faced with hinges on small models is that they were too stiff. Always needing a lot of power to move them.
When Ace R/C came out with the nylon half A hinges I just knew there was a problem solved. Not so. I kept cutting them narrower and even tried drilling small holes where the hinge line was and they were still too stiff.

 So long as the alignment is good (this is important with all hinging as we all know), the type hinge I am suggesting here will provide slop free movement with almost no play or resistance.

Mylar hinges are cheap, easy and work very well. This includes the floppy disk kind as well.

I plan on starting a thread covering a number of hinging methods in the future. I like the sewn type myself but there are some who don't like or won't use them for one reason or another. I also like the cloth hinges. some think them unsightly. Both sewn and cloth hinges suffer a great deal from being too stiff if you get too much dope in the middle.

Besides! Some of us just like to piddle around!
  I like coming up with new uses for "found items" Stuff you can get for free or nearly so. Such as the aerosol straws and the soda can material.

Robert

In the early 60's there was a belief for a while that rod-and-tube hinges were the really high class way to go.

There were an upgrade from the cloth hinges that would get brittle with dope and eventually fail.  With rod-and-tube your could finish the basic plane and the control surfaces seperately and delay final assembly until the end.

The downfall was that with piano wire rods and aluminum or brass tubes, they eventually wore out and the result was pretty much the same as cloth.

Nylon hinges came on the market - end of story.

Looks like a lot of thought went into making the hinges, but seems like a lot of trouble.

I use "figure 8" sewn hinges on just about everything.  I even put them on an R/C ARF when the imitation mylar hinges were so stiff the servoes wouldn't center.

BTW I now use spiderwire for the hinges.  The only drawback is the color.  I used to use "nylon 1/2A control lines", but the junk that's available now apparently isn't nylon.  I've heard that dental floss works. 

The easiest ways to hinge the elevator on a 1/2A are Chinese style (my favorite), the thread-sewn figure eight (mentioned above), and a method that IMHO is by far the easiest, just glue a single piece of cloth hinge (preferably nylon) to the bottom of each elevator to stab line. This method calls for a 45 degree bevel on the elevator to allow movement without a large gap between the elevator and stab.

George

I was looking for a good how-to post on sewn hinges. Does anyone have the link?

John sewn hinges are really a piece of cake to do! Here is a link that explains it pretty well:
http://www.iroquois.free-online.co.uk/knot.htm

 If you are still unsure, ask again! Here is a pic of a sewn hinge for you.

Robert

Got it thanks.  The trick that I picked up from the article is that the holes in the two mating surfaces need to be off set by a 1/2 hole spacing.  The article warns agents super glue. I can see where it could be bad.  How about dope? I have used dope in the past to do cloth henges on a Ringmaster.  Anyway all good info. Thanks!!