Brodhead Pietenpol Association

From the BPA e-mail bag:

Would you be able to put me in touch with someone who sells the hinges for the horizontal and vertical stabilizers for the pietenpol?

Or, is someone selling a kit containing all necessary metal hardware?

Well, I used to sell complete, finished sets of hinges (less the mounting hardware and hinge pins), but have not had time to finish them anymore. I have since been selling sets of the rough castings for builders to finish on their own though, and I have plenty of those available.

There is no "kit" of the complete hinges, as far as I know, but it would not be difficult to put the hardware together since it's just AN clevis pins, washers, cotter pins, and machine screws.

Oscar Zuniga currently sells the cast aluminum hinges. These are the hinges that were previously made and sold by Vi Kapler. Here is a link to Oscar's wesite. http://www.flysquirrel.net/RogueAir/hinges.html

Rick Schreiber
NX478RS

We must have been posting about the same time Oscar, I'm just a little slow on the trigger

Several builders who have bought the rough-cast hinge parts from me for turning into finished parts have asked for ideas on how to set up a jig for drilling the pivot pin holes in the parts, so I made a sketch that I hope will help. Although my jig isn't like what I've sketched, it doesn't have to be... the idea is to get the bases nice and flat and more or less the same thickness so when you put each part in the jig, the pivot holes will all line up. It's not a precision operation, but I can offer some hints. The main one is to square off the bases and edges first so you'll have a true reference surface, then drill the mounting holes so you can then mount the parts securely in place while you perform the other operations.

With each part held securely, squaring up the sides of the 'ears' with a mill or file is the next most important step because the sides and edges of the parts are slightly tapered when they come out of the mold so that they will release from the mold easier. If you don't square up the sides of the 'ears' before trying to drill the 3/16" pivot pin holes, the drill bit will tend to 'walk' off of center and the holes won't line up as they should.

Once again, the attached sketch is just an idea to get you thinking about how to hold the part securely while you drill the holes. As I've shown, placement of the holes on the 'ears' is not critical but should be sufficient to allow a standard thin AN960 washer to fit on the face of the ear without having to file a flat onto one edge. Don't go too far in the other direction though, because the weakest spot in the whole hinge pair is the top of the ear on the single-tab hinge half and drilling the hole too close to the outer edge of the tab will reduce the strength of the assembly.