If you have a lot of wood to remove, pickup a razor plane. Most hardware stores will have them. It makes for a lot faster progress. Iwould only remove wood on one side of the stick for each dimention. That maintains a 90 Degree angle on two knownstraight sides that you can then gage the sanded sides from.

While you are at the hardware store, Buy a narrow sanding belt of the finest grit you can find. Usually around 80 Grit, and as long as you can find. Pick up a small roll of carpet tape and a 1x4 board that is straight and long enough that the sanding belt can be cut and then layed out straight on. The belts are ususally around 24" long layed out straight. Use the carpet tape and tape the sanding belt to the board. When you cut the belt, cut it centered on the splice. That splice is noticable on the back of the belt and is usually a 45 degree splce. That leaves the center of the belt as flat as your board. Put the tape on the board first, and keep it just back from an edge. When you put the belt on the tape, keep it aligned with the edge of the board. You can then hold the board on edge on your bench and slide the wood to be sanded along board. This keeps a 90 degree angle on the sanded piece. When sanding the edges of asheet, I lay a piece of the rubber drawer liner down and put the sanding board on it and the try to position your handsso you have three equal segments on the piece being sanded. Use light pressure, and only stroke the piece onthe sanding board in one direction. This prevents, or at least helpsprevent a curve being sanded in fromthe back and forth handmovement. If you keep this board clean, it will be good for many a build. I've got six builds and three rebulds on mine and it is neary as new.

One other toolfrom the hardware store is a 36" aluminnum door sill. Check the closely for being straight. When you get it home, drill out the mounting holes as they are usually punched in and the sill willnot lay flat on a table because the aluminum is flared from the hole being punched. I picked up thistrick from the guy that was putting in inlayed flooring in our kitchen. A nice long fine edge straight edge for around $8. The flooring guy had a 45 degree cut on one end, I though about doing that, but acombination square iseasier to handleand more than big enoughformost all of our angle cuts.

Don

As you have been told - don't try to drill where old hinges are. Go into fresh wood area and use http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...?&I=LXET65&P=7 as a centering guide.

I appreciate the friendly reminder, and that is exactly what ive tried. In order to keep from having surfaces that look like swiss cheese and never getting this plane off the ground, I wanted to gather as much information as possible in order to evaluate what the best method might be.

I bought the Robart Drill Jig referenced above and still had a difficult time. I believe the reason might be because the hinges that were in place look like CA hinges, top layer anyway, yet there is a center layer made of plastic.

I wonder if 1) these are the hinges which were provided with the ARF, if so 2) Is this the reason why some had trouble keeping the surfaces intact. When I received the plane, I was able to pull the ailerons out by hand. Looks like the cloth weave layer would stay glued to the wood, yet the plastic layer would seperate and let go.

That may be the (glue) layer that was used as a lot of ARFs are done this way - might do a very carefull exacto removal of one of them by carefully sliding the blade on both sides of the GLUE area and wiggling it out to see what you are up aganst- you may just have to re make those serfaces or add hinges to a clean wood area- let us know just what you dig out of one of the hinge areas and we may be able to help more on ti
Don

Ill post pics later. I was able to pull an entire hinge out. If Im understanding what you are saying, its definitely a plastic center layer.

You NEVER want to re-use a CA hinge slot. Once CA has been applied to the wood it won't get a good grip on the new hinge. Whatever hinge you use to replace the CA hinge put in in FRESH wood.

Here is the result so far:

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=9527780

It's looking good, but don't forget to put the backup blocks like in Mikes photo shop pic of the fix. You need a couple of the barbs inwood for the hinge point to hold. Lay the Hinge point on top, with the hinge pin on the TE and see how much of the barbed shank is going to be in wood. Ithink you will find that only one would be and that won't hold. Three is going to be enought.


Don

I havent forgotten about the blocks. Just havent gotten there yet. But thanks for the reminder and confirming that 3 points will be sufficient.