Tip: Drilling hinges
 

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



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


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


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


The Bottom view

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

Kind Regards
Rudi

Rudy,

Great simple hint that will work great! Thanks for posting.

Jim