After reading all of the debate in the previous posts about the proper adhesive for hinge point installation, I decided to do a little experiment. I was preparing for my first installation of the hinge points and decided to practice on some scrap balsa prior to screwing up my new arf. I used a piece of 1/2" square balsa stock and followed the techniques described above including dampening the holes for the gorilla glue prior to installation and using a toothpick to make sure the glue is completely coating the inside of the holes. Picture one shows the setup I made. The two types of glue used was titebond III, and gorilla glue. After putting the setup together I left it alone for approximately 18 hours. After the setup time you can see in picture 2 and 3 what the dried glue looks like on the outside of the holes. Obviously I did not baby sit the installation or clean away the excess glue because I wanted to see how much foam would really occur. The theory on the gorilla glue foaming up and creating a big blob on the backside of the hole doesn't happen, and I would consider this glue to be negligible in the holding strength of the hinge. Picture 4 shows the straps (dog leashes) that I used to pull on the hinges. I stood on one end and pulled on the other with my arms until something failed. As you can see in the 5th picture the tite bond hinge pulled out of the wood, and the Gorilla glue failed at the actual hinge. Upon closer examination of the titebond hinge it appeared that I did not have much glue if any in the hole so I tried again. The results of the retrial can be seen in the last picture as the titebond held as well and the actual hinge failed itself.

Soooooo.... after all of this I learned it doesn't matter what glue is used; it is all in how careful you are in the installation. I was surprised at how strong these things were. Even in the first titebond failure I had to pull very hard to get it to fail. After this experiment I completed the hinging of my ARF, and the process went very smooth and resulted in a good strong free moving hinge with almost no gap at all.