Rivet an Inspection Hole in Place. Fly cutting an inspection hole on an assembled airframe is a risky undertaking. I saw the Sonex crew use this clever technique to increase their odds of success. Drill a pilot hole in the center of a 1/4-inch-thick piece of aluminum to accommodate the fly cutter’s pilot bit. Blind rivet it to the skin, centering the pilot hole where the access hole needs to be. The pilot hole guides the fly cutter’s pilot bit and squelches the skin’s urge to vibrate. This photo shows the fixture still attached to the “hole” that was cut in the skin.
No project is a straight line from Step 1 to Step 527 or, for that matter, Step 1 to Step 2. There can be enough left unsaid to fritter away an hour solving the “how?” portion of a step. If you’ve ever tried to introduce a nut to a bolt in a space too small for your hand, you know what I mean. If you haven’t, you will.
Set a Radius on the Fly. Setting a fly cutter’s radius with a ruler can be cumbersome because the tip of the pilot drill and the cutting tip aren’t aligned. Instead, mark the desired radius on your workbench with a square and use those lines to set the fly cutter.
When I was still too young to use the phrase “When I was young…,” Popular Mechanics magazine ran the Roy Doty cartoon Wordless Workshop. Without a single written word it depicted a pipe-smoking man-of-the-house solving household problems to his wife’s and young son’s unbridled joy. I’m adapting that idea to this column, banking on the axiom that photos are worth 1000 words. (I’ve learned, however, they can generate 1000 questions—thus, captions.) Maybe an idea from this incongruent collection of tips will save you an hour someday.
Tape Your Jaws. The jaws and pivot bolt of snips can scratch parts. Duct tape reduces that chance.Pop Out POP Rivets. The head of blind rivets often comes off while the tail remains in the hole. A center punch can drive the tail out with less chance of damaging the hole than continued drilling.Socket to the Circle Template. Sockets can substitute for circle templates when laying out parts. I used this technique when I mislaid my circle template. Necessity is a mother, and so forth.Tape Your Nuts. Inevitably there is a washer and nut that can’t be installed with your fingers. Taping them to a screwdriver tip or into a combination wrench lets you reach those tight spots.Vacuum Tube. A small tube or hose stuffed in the vacuum’s hose provides added reach for sucking debris from crevasses beyond the reach of standard vacuum attachments.Target for Today. Color the target hole diameter on a Unibit with a marker to aid drilling to the correct size the first time and, more important, reduce the chance of oversizing the hole.Tug, or War? Don’t go to battle trying to insert a cable or wire in a housing. Pulling the cable housing straight reduces friction and the chance the blunt or sharp end of the cable/wire will catch in the housing. Here, one end of the housing is clamped in a vise and the housing is pulled taught to insert the music wire (left). Easy Edge Easing. This homemade edge forming tool is made from Delrin, though one made from hardwood or phenolic should also work. It works like a charm if you have a limited need or a limited budget (right).Brighten Your Loom With Some Color. My first airplane had labeled wires, all white. Some labels were difficult to read once installed and the white wires would have been even harder to trace. My current project will have color-coded wire. Colored Tefzel wire is available, but spray painting white wire opens up the universe of color-coding options and eliminates coming up one foot short of red 14 AWG and having to order more. The wire can be painted at each terminus and intermittently along its length. Colors can be combined on a single wire to provide even more coding options.
Excellent tips! Thank you for sharing these. I love this stuff. All the neat things you learn from experience. The kind of tips that make you kick yourself for not thinking of it yourself, or not thinking of it sooner, are often times the best tips of all. It’s the little things that can make the biggest difference sometimes, and save oneself a lot of frustration.
Excellent tips! Thank you for sharing these. I love this stuff. All the neat things you learn from experience. The kind of tips that make you kick yourself for not thinking of it yourself, or not thinking of it sooner, are often times the best tips of all. It’s the little things that can make the biggest difference sometimes, and save oneself a lot of frustration.