Tail Assembly Clamping Methods

Ian Ferguson writes from Australia, "I had some trouble drilling the tail spars after clamping the hinges in position. My solution was to run a little cyano-acrylate under the hinges in a couple of spots after they were positioned. This held them while drilling. No doubt there are other and better ways of skinning that particular cat."

From "Tool Talk" Falco Builders Letter, December 1985

Steve Wilkinson offered a couple of suggestions. In our construction manual, we call for drilling the tail group hinges with a drill press while the hinge is still clamped in place. Steve's clamps and drill press did not permit this, so he used a hand-held drill to start the hole, then removed the hinge and drilled the rest of the hole on a drill press. He was also unable to clamp the main landing gear fittings to the main wing spar, so he just used a couple of "collar-button size" blobs of epoxy to hold the fitting in place. After drilling, the fitting was easily knocked loose.