• To help prevent allergic reaction when using Epoxy, get a bunch of surgical gloves.  Clean-up is a then a breeze!
• Put a chunk of Styrofoam in the bottom of a mug, to hold the many X-Acto knives.
• Keep a small but strong magnet handy when building.  It's a great way to pick up all those pesky T-pins.  And, it keeps them together in a nice pile.  Just pass the magnet over the work area, and it picks them up.  It even gets the ones you can't see!  Just pick off a pin when you need to.  It's also a safer way to pick up them used X-Acto blades.  Also, use the magnet to pick up those small nuts & bolts.
• Keep your work area clean.
• Store your unopened CA in the fridge.  Makes it last longer.
• Gyprock and Wall board  makes a great building surface, because it's pretty flat, and you can stick pins in it.  It's cheaper than cork, or fiber board, it's dirt cheap for a 4' x 8' piece.  But it doesn't last as long.  Just lay it on your table, plop your plan on it, and start building

Basic Glue advice

Typical glues used in models are medium thickness CA, thin CA, 5-minute epoxy, standard white wood glue and yellow aliphatic wood glue

Thin CA should only be used on wood joints that fit together perfectly (no gaps). The parts to be joined are first mated in final position and *then* the thin CA is applied such that it "wicks" through the wood. Curing is instant.

Medium CA is for most joints where slight imperfections in the fit exist. You apply it to one of the parts and then mate the parts. You have about 10 seconds to position the parts before the glue cures. With thick CA (and sometimes even with medium CA) you may want to use a "kicker": spray as a curing accelerator. This will make the joint more brittle and may prevent the CA from soaking deeply into the wood.

Epoxy, while heavy, is very strong and you don't need much. Typically used for wing joiners, etc. Just as importantly it can give you a lot of time to get critical alignments just right. 5-minute epoxy is commonly used, although 30 minute and longer epoxies are available. Epoxy is also good for filling gaps. When using long set epoxy or filling gaps, the glue can often run. To help prevent this you can purchase a glue thickener to mix with the epoxy, sometimes in the form of cotton flock, to make the glue less viscous.

White wood PVA glue can be used for general wood to wood building, but if a joined area has to be sanded afterwards, it may be difficult to remove signs of the join as the glue will form a hump. To get over this consider using the yellow aliphatic wood glue which is more sandable

Glue is an art form and only learnt by experience

Glued Up Building Pins

To help stop your building pins from accumulating glue, put all the pins into a jar and spray some furniture polish onto them, give them a good shake around to make sure they all get some. The pins now slide into the balsa smooth as silk, and the glue doesn't stick to them any more!

If you have pins with Cyano on them, then leave them overnight in acetone and it will be gone by morning

Simulating built up wings using foam wings

The one thing that makes a scale model stand out from all the other types is the detailing involved in making it faithfully represent the full-size.

Of course, many people don't bother with any detailing at all, which is a shame, because, even with a minimum amount of work, your model can be made to appear a lot more realistic than would otherwise be the case. The detail I'm about to illuminate will take you one or two hours at the most and is simplicity itself to apply. When you look along the wing of a full-size wooden glider you will see that, along the 'D' box sheeting from the leading-edge back to the spar, the positions of all the ribs and riblets are visible because of the slight sagging of the fairly thin plywood. When you look along a models wing, be it covered in 1/16" balsa or 1I64" ply, this effect is not visible at all. A foam wing of course will be totally smooth, but there is a way to simulate the effect, which, whilst not perfect, does add the appearance of realism to your scale model.

The method is a simple one: thin strips of Solartex are ironed down on the wing sheeting at the rib stations and on the ailerons too if they happen to be solid. Diagonal structure can be added too with a few strokes of the iron, although I must confess to a certain amount of laziness when I say that it's only the top surface of the wing (the bit you can see on the ground) that I bother about.

The best way to strip the Solartex is to cut a small nick in the fabric and then tear it along the weave; the resultant strip will then be easy to keep straight, as the strip is square to the weave, The thinner the Strips the better the effect, although a thickness between 1/8" and 1I16" seems to be the smallest practicable size.

Cutting Glass Cloth and Kevlar

Spray a line of hairspray where you'll be cutting before applying the masking tape. Let it dry a few minutes. Hairspray will hold the Kevlar together and keep from fraying when pulling the tape off. Also, when cutting light glass, lay the glass fabric over a sheet of newspaper and fog with hairspray lightly. You won't believe how easy it will be to handle and cut the cloth. Masking tape along the cutting line can also be used but can be difficult to remove without fraying the cloth.

To cut the cloth, use a sharp Stanley knife or scissors. When cutting Kevlar ordinary scissors will soon blunt and one can buy expensive purpose made Kevlar sheers but first try taking a cheep pair of scissors and grind a rough cutting edge on them. This will help cut the Kevlar much easier

Silicone Hinges

This is a great way to hinge your control surfaces that is fast, strong and clean.

The general steps are:

• Finish off the front side of the control surface and back side of the wing where the control surface will reside. I have had good luck with micro baloons and epoxy.
• Tape the control surface in place with approximatly a 1/16? gap between the control surface and wing.
• Make sure the tape is pressed down well so that no silicone will seep through.
• Open the control surface and run a bead of silicone 1/16? - 1/8? (depending on the size of the control surface)
• Use your finger or a small rounded piece of wood to spread the silicone uniformly.
• Wipe any excess off now. It is a lot easier to remove before it cures.
• Close the control surface to it?s neutral position and let it cure for 24 hours.

Use of standard masking tape will probably work the best. It seems best to use a tape that is a bit porous to help the silicone directly under the tape cure. One person said that using the blue painters masking tape affected curing of silicone

Getting a feel for how the bead comes out of the tube or gun is important. It may be prudent to do a test hinge or two with different tapes/silicones and use what works best for you.

Reversing Servos

If you have two servos on one channel and need to reverse the direction of one of the servos, instead of risking taking your servo apart and trying to resolder the connections or buying an electronic servo reverser, you may first like to try the most cost-effective and simplest solution.

Some manufacturers servos rotate in opposite directions to others, so if you fit a Futaba and a Hitec servo on the same channel your problem is solved - but check before you buy. Futaba and older JR servos may also work.