Joe,
We all want to help. In order to lessen your burden I suggest we all send you our addresses and you can just store it at our houses.
For a very small user fee taken out in balsa and cf materials.
Cool building tools
- Thread starter Turbojoe
- Start date
Joe,
We all want to help. In order to lessen your burden I suggest we all send you our addresses and you can just store it at our houses.
For a very small user fee taken out in balsa and cf materials.
Turbojoe
Elite member
Joe,
We all want to help. In order to lessen your burden I suggest we all send you our addresses and you can just store it at our houses.
Trust me, you're not the only one to make that offer out of the kindness of their heart.
Joe
Turbojoe
Elite member
OK so this isn't a tool but more a storage solution. I don't know about you guys but I've gotten to the point that friends call me an R/C hoarder. I STILL have my RC12i from back in the very early 80's. All of the tires have rotted away! STILL have my RC10T that I drove to Ranch Pit Shop and bought directly from Gil Losi sr. days before it was released to the public. I sold off all my airplane stuff when I got married in 1986 and since my divorce in 2002 I've been buying everything in site. 4 bedroom house and 2 are dedicated to build and store of R/C stuff. 3rd is overflow until the kids or ex-wife (we're still good friends) come to visit. Then I pack it all in the first two rooms. Exhausting.....
I have a bunch of plastic shelf units. Hate them! I was looking at Home Depot for nice wire shelf units and got sticker shock. Then I thought what the heck, lets see what Target has. I found THIS. $39.99 for the next 24 hours. Then $49.99 after that. Still worth every penny. After assembling the one I picked up at the store yesterday I immediately ordered two more online. Not flimsy garbage. These are very heavy and very sturdy. I also have THESE coming. A 10 pack of shoe size that will hold a lot of ESC's, servos, motors, props etc, etc, etc. It's starting to look like I may finally get somewhat organized......
Joe
I have a bunch of plastic shelf units. Hate them! I was looking at Home Depot for nice wire shelf units and got sticker shock. Then I thought what the heck, lets see what Target has. I found THIS. $39.99 for the next 24 hours. Then $49.99 after that. Still worth every penny. After assembling the one I picked up at the store yesterday I immediately ordered two more online. Not flimsy garbage. These are very heavy and very sturdy. I also have THESE coming. A 10 pack of shoe size that will hold a lot of ESC's, servos, motors, props etc, etc, etc. It's starting to look like I may finally get somewhat organized......
Joe
Turbojoe
Elite member
I just needed to rip a quick piece of 1/8" balsa and grabbed my trusty balsa stripper ripping board. I'm sure most are familiar with the Master Airscrew balsa stripper. I took mine a step further several years ago and mounted that puppy so I could do more precise stripping. This was made 100% from scrap. 3/4" melamine sheeted MDF and a 1/4" strip of who knows what to act as a long straight edge while pushing the sheet through the stripper. I ground down a second Xacto blade and mounted it to the outside of the cutting blade to better stabilize the blade during the cut. I use a digital caliper to adjust the stripper to the exact size I want. Every strip comes out the EXACT size I set it to.
No more paying a buck at the LHS for a 1/8" square balsa stick! I can cut up to 24 from a cheap 3" sheet of balsa! At 8 bucks for the stripper it's one of the best money savers you can buy for this hobby.
Joe
No more paying a buck at the LHS for a 1/8" square balsa stick! I can cut up to 24 from a cheap 3" sheet of balsa! At 8 bucks for the stripper it's one of the best money savers you can buy for this hobby.
Joe
The blade can wander when cutting thick stock, so I'll raise the blade so it only cuts half way through on the first cut. Then I flip the sheet and cut from the back to complete the cut. That seems to work very well.
Turbojoe
Elite member
If you're going to build anything that requires standard, Robart, pinned or even Tyvek hinges this is a MUST HAVE. Great Planes Slot Machine. I just cut slots for 30 hinges on my Telemaster 40. Every one perfection. Can't imagine doing it old school with a pen, a straight edge and an Xacto knife again like in the bad old days. I'd sooner stab myself with the Xacto! The Great Planes "precision" hinge marking tool and Slot Machine cutting guide are total crap! Don't waste your money on them. Use the Dubro Kwik hinge slotter. All you want from that dirt cheap package is the adjustable slot guide. You'll get perfectly centered hinge lines every time. $20.00 for the Slot Machine and $3.79 for the Dubro slot guide package. It'll save you three times that in time and frustration from the very first use. I'll bet I've cut 200+ hinge slots and I'm STILL using the original blades that came with it. I bought my Slot Machine many years ago when it was first released and I could swear I paid close to or maybe even over $40.00 for it. I'd happily pay that again if I had to.
Joe
Joe
Hai-Lee
Old and Bold RC PILOT
I have a similar balsa stripper as well and it works equally well when cutting strips of FB for use as spars in FB models. For folded spars I just raise the blade so that I do not cut through the bottom paper for the central cut and then readjust the width and lower the blade to cut out the "Perfect" spar.
Well I'm getting ready to build a few more planes and wanted a better build table but at the same time something more mobile for when I'm waiting for glue to dry or want to repair or start something new. So what I did was take some 1/2" 11-ply cabinet grade ply wood and built a wing table and a fuselage table. The long one is the fus table that still needs the nod racks for the conduit holders. This was sized for a 6' Spitfire I will be starting soon. I then saved each one, added some center lines and references lines before a few coats or minwax. Will start using them this week!
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Dusting off this old thread... Here's a great tool for drilling centered holes. It's always a pain trying to mark where you want to drill a hole, only to find the pen mark is off by a few mm. This tool is great for many gas/glow/electric power plants. The tapered cone fits down into the hole on the engine or motor, and the actual drillbit is then fed down through the tube so you can hand-drill a little bit to mark the wood for drilling. I just used it to mount a 9cc gas engine (designed for beam mounting) and it worked perfectly. No elongated holes on this plane!
Here's a great tool for drilling centered holes. It's always a pain trying to mark where you want to drill a hole, only to find the pen mark is off by a few mm. This tool is great for many gas/glow/electric power plants. The tapered cone fits down into the hole on the engine or motor, and the actual drillbit is then fed down through the tube so you can hand-drill a little bit to mark the wood for drilling. I just used it to mount a 9cc gas engine (designed for beam mounting) and it worked perfectly. No elongated holes on this plane!
A late Christmas gift arrived today from Amazon, the "TruePower 01-0819 Mini Electric Table Saw, 4-Inch." I actually got one of these for my dad as a Christmas present this year and I liked what I saw when he opened his up so I pulled the trigger on one for myself as well. Before opening his gift we were talking planes and tools, and without prompting he said he was looking hard at the hobby table saws in a British RC plane magazine, "But they're 220v so I'll have to find something that'll work for 110." His timing was perfect, so I handed him the present and he was extremely surprised! Then he asked if I could do that kind of magic with a blonde...
The only setup I had to do was to install the blade guard and use a good 90* square to set the guide for testing. It fires up perfectly and my cuts are nice and true. I ran some 1/4" light ply through it with no issues. The blade height is not adjustable, but for $40 I can't complain. It also includes blades for metal and ceramic (??), but for me cutting wood is good enough for me.
The only setup I had to do was to install the blade guard and use a good 90* square to set the guide for testing. It fires up perfectly and my cuts are nice and true. I ran some 1/4" light ply through it with no issues. The blade height is not adjustable, but for $40 I can't complain. It also includes blades for metal and ceramic (??), but for me cutting wood is good enough for me.
Turbojoe
Elite member
Looks like the Harbor Freight Mini Table Saw with some useful updates. I've had my HF saw for MANY years. I made a "sled" for it a long time ago and now it's a truly useful shop tool. Too bad there aren't more blades available in this 4" size that don't cost more than two or three saws. You can sometimes find the Dremel 4" blades on eBay but you'll need to mortgage the house for one........
Joe
Joe
The base casting looks the same, with a different top on it. I read some reviews that claim it's sold under a number of different names, probably like the HF version with their own spin on it as well.
Seahunter
Active member
One of my favorite building tools would have to be my magnetic clamp set that I made from plans I found at www.airfieldmodels.com. You use a flat steel building board and place your plans on it and the magnetic fixtures hold everything true and flat while you glue the joints resulting in a beautiful straight component. All credit for this system go to Paul K. Johnson at airfieldmodels.com. He will custom build the fixtures and sells them. Also you will find free plans to build your own system there, which I did some years ago. The flat steel surface results in straight airframes! Photos are of a Guillow's Cherokee 140 I built as a 180 for display.
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Turbojoe
Elite member
My wise old grand pappy once told me "if it floats, flys or fornicates it's cheaper to rent it"
Just think how much hobby room the wife takes up.......I'm kidding of course but it's a bargaining chip........ I was married over 17 years. Now divorced and happy again. You gotta be smart in divorce. She took me for ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!
Joe
Keno
Well-known member
Good to see you, great work. Dang weather got me tied down a little, got to see the lung doc next month to see what going on. I'll PM you when I get more info. ken
Here's something that is cheap enough (under $10) to be in everybody's tool box, a full set of metric and SAE hex wrenches. I picked up a set of these about 5 years ago, and over time have lost a few. It seems that most ARFs today come with a few of their own, so I've got a big pile of misc sizes. Those are all getting put to use in my field box, and the goal is to keep all of these new ones at my workbench. I'm also spraying the SAE pieces with red paint so I can hopefully avoid mixing them up in the future.
Turbojoe
Elite member
Amazing how cheap you can pick up sets of Allen wrenches for AND how useful they are in the hobby and around the house. Playing with airplanes and helicopters I have full sets of SAE and Metric "T" handles, ball end and hardened hex drivers. You just tend to accumulate these tools over time but stuff like this is difficult to ever over spend on. There will ALWAYS be a use for them.
It's amazing the huge pile of .050 Allen wrenches I had from buying Dubro products. I finally started throwing some away. LOL.
Joe
It's amazing the huge pile of .050 Allen wrenches I had from buying Dubro products. I finally started throwing some away. LOL.
Joe
Vimana89
Legendary member
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