Drilling Spinner Holes

[fishplanebeer]

Just wondering if anyone has a good tip for drilling holes into the centre of spinners?

 

I've tried doing this with my Do217E project as the spinners on the aircraft have small holes in the centre of the spinners and it was a real nightmare trying to get the hole centred with lots of attempts and having to pack the spinner with fine Milliput on numerous occasions so that I could then re-drill. I finally got them looking roughly centred but there must be a better way of doing this, hopefully!

 

Regards

Colin.

[Alex Gordon]

I've been meaning to make a centre finder

 

 

There is this thread

 

 

Hope this helps.

[fishplanebeer]

The problem is that with the spinners being domed at the end and quite small in diameter in 72nd scale it is almost impossible to use any form of tool on them to line up the centre. Perhaps just flattening them a wee bit at the tip may give an easier target area to aim at so I'll have a go at doing this and see what results I get.

 

Regards

Colin.

[busnproplinerfan]

The hole wold be where the bolt attaches the spinner to the prop. Aside from using a calibrated eyeball. Maybe try a piece of carbon paper, sit the spinner down and just tap the tip lightly while holding the paper spread out between fingers. Maybe to the same with some masking tape. Anyway, to mark a hole, I use a tack, makes a good center punch. In 1/72 you may not even need to drill it out, the pin should make strong enough mark. Maybe also try mounting it into the chuck of a slow drill or dremmel type tool. Just be hard to get it very straight then gently touch the end while it's running with a sanding stick or file.

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

I drill them from the inside.

[modelmaker]

I don't know if you can scale this up for a '72nd spinner, but for drilling or marking centres in things like '72nd gun barrels I have a selection of hypo tubes, old printer ink refills with hypo type tubes, bits of plastic tube etc, and when I want to drill a little hole in the end of a gun barrel or similar I slip a suitable small length of tube over the end of the barrel and a drill of the same size as the hypo tube internal dia inside. This marks the centre nicely. With care you can press the drill in slightly so get a slightly larger 'hole' (a dimple works nicely in '72). 

If you wanted a real hole you often have to sleeve various tubes over or inside others so you can get a small enough drill through to drill a hole, if you see what I mean. If you used the centering drill which is the diameter of the inner sleeve over the plastic part it is obviously the same diameter AS the plastic part!  You might be able to sleeve over the spinner, then sleeve down until you can at least mark the centre with a drill bit?  My mk 1 eyeball is notoriously poor at marking centres, hence the above trick for gun barrels. 'might help.....