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Building Tips and technical articles. => Building techniques => Topic started by: Dave Rigotti on November 08, 2019, 05:06:56 PM
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I just thought I'd share something I discovered using the ever so rare Klett hinges. With these hinges getting very rare to find I "harvested" the hinges from a recently unairworthy (crashed) stunter.
He's how I did it.
First off I glue all my hinges in with RC56 canopy glue. I removed the hinges from the balsa airframe using an #11 hobby blade, side cutters, pliers, etc. This left a lot of balsa stuck to the hinge tabs.
I then put the batch in a microwave oven safe container with a cup or so of water and set the time to 4 minutes and "cooked" the batch on high setting. I let them set for a few minutes to cool a bit and then simply peeled off the stuck on balsa/glue. A quick wipe with a paper towel and they were "as new". The stunter had "only" about 75 flights on it so I figured the hinges were in good shape. I'm not sure how hinges from a stunter that has 1,000 flights on it would be.
I also thought boiling them couldn't hurt the base material.
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Great idea Dave.
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I can tell you what is different about them - the Kletts have the L-shaped pin that can be removed.
Dubros use a pin with swaged ends, that can't be removed. (You can cut it with side cutters, and replace it with an L-shaped one :) )
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Can someone tell me why Klett hinges are any better than Dubro hinges.
Vastly more free, removable pins (so they can be discarded and a single long pin used), no flash straight out of the package. It takes about 5 minutes a piece to rework Du-Bro hinges to the same standard.
Brett