Swordsman 18 hinges

[Andrew Saunders]

I am in the process of building the Swordsman 18 half a stunter for my nephew. I am wondering if using monokote or as i am using ultra cote as hinges. Can you make the hinges after the elevator and elevator stab is covered?

[Mike Griffin]

Yes you can Andrew.   When you iron them to the covering they virtually disappear.

Mike

[Andrew Saunders]

Whats the process of doing it? Or how do i go about it?

[Brett Buck]

I am in the process of building the Swordsman 18 half a stunter for my nephew. I am wondering if using monokote or as i am using ultra cote as hinges. Can you make the hinges after the elevator and elevator stab is covered?

    You pretty much have to make them afterwards. It works well - for a while. I don't  know about Ultracoat, but Monokote gets extremely brittle from UV exposure in just a few years in the warm California Sun ( likely longer elsewhere) and then it cracks. The Skyray is over 20 years old now, but the Monokote hinges were in trouble in less than 5, and that was will relatively low use (since for a long time it had a Fox that wouldn't run, in those pre-Burp Fix days). I put new Monokote hinges over the first set, and same thing. It's now largely held together with Scotch Clear Plastic tape (that we use for hinge sealing) and that has been pretty durable.

    Brett

[Mike Griffin]

Andrew basically the way I do it is that I cut two strips of the plastic covering material about 1" wide and however long the width of the roll is.  So what you end up with is two strips of covering that you will lay next to each other with the adhesive side up on one of the strips and the adhesive side Down on the other  strip.  Overlap the edges of the strips by about 1/8" and CAREFULLY use a heating iron set on low heat and fuse the two strips together on that 1/8" overlap.  Then cut the hinges cross ways the width you prefer and you will have your hinges.  Then you just Iron them on the moveable part (flap or elevator) in alternating one on bottom and one on top, one on bottom, one on top .  Once you have your hinges attached on your moveable surface then you can fit them to the stab or trailing edge of the wing and iron them down on those surfaces.

Walter Umland used to have a pictorial  step by step of what I just explained but his web site says it is down because he has been sick....maybe someone on here has a copy of it....

Hope this helps

Mike

[john e. holliday]

Once you have your Monokote/Ultrakote hinges made it is just like doing cloth hinges without the glue.